Beater's Chronicles: Montrose Magpies
by Fai's smile
Summary: The new season (5) of QLFC is on. It looks like Montrose Magpies brought most of the Pride's players in a surprising twist of events. Fai commented it with. "Well, they do have more complimentary colours." Watch out, the season's finale is coming! Now, with Weasleys and dragons!
1. Practice round: Stainless

**Practice round**

 **Prompts: Regulus Black (character), Picture of Dorian Gray (round)**

 **Word count: (1037)**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own author's rights of Harry Potter series and I make no money from this. I won't say no to virtual cookies or compliments, though. I do live off reviews.**

* * *

 **Stainless**

Regulus looked at himself. His reflection was perfect. His cheekbones were prominent and his eyes a captivating shade of mercury. All that, comb d with his pale skin, soft black hair with few gentle curls, and half-lidded eyelids made him look like the mysterious romantic hero of some novel from last century.

He looked exactly same as yesterday. _Well, not really_ , he thought, glancing at his left forearm. The skin around the mark was still red but was not even close to the vivid red of blood. Regulus Black looked the same as he had yesterday, plus an angry new tattoo.

But he wasn't.

He looked in the mirror again. His reflection had blood-stained hands and his eyes were shadowed. His skin was still pale, but it suddenly did not look like the alabaster white of upper class, but rather as an unhealthy paleness. Regulus turned on his heel and left the bathroom. There was no blood on his hands because he was a hero and heroes never had bloodstained hands, no matter how much death they caused.

They were stainless because Regulus was a hero, and his tender left forearm would never let him forget that.

* * *

Regulus carefully applied a soothing balm under his eyes and over the eyelids before casting a handy little glamour charm to hide away the black circles under his haunted red and stinging eyes.

He cast a few other handy cosmetic charms that he had mostly learned from Cissy and Ceres. And suddenly he looked like a perfect little aristocrat with shadowed and haunted eyes. He closed them and went through some Occlumency exercises; when he opened them again, they shone like pure mercury and were just as unreadable. He smiled, a polite little insincere curve of lips, and went out to welcome the guests.

He managed to get a coffee into himself before they started arriving, and he is immensely glad of it as he greets the head of the DMLE. Even if Regulus appears perfectly well-rested, it is quite plain the man still thinks he was on the last night's mission to get rid of the McKinnons. If he had the energy left, he might feel outraged at such close-mindedness, but as it is, Regulus is grimly amused that the man is so close to the truth and yet so completely wrong. Not that it matters; Crouch can't move against an heir of the Blacks without solid evidence, martial law be damned. Crouch lacks that kind of political clout.

Regulus smiles and acts. His hands are already red, he sees it every time he looks into the mirror, yet the hands holding a glass of Firewhiskey and shaking hands with guests are spotlessly white.

He knows that shattering the mirror wouldn't help. He is no Dorian Gray. The mirror isn't magical; it's just his mind playing tricks on him. (He is sure it's his mind and not Sirius, simply because he knows his brother. Knows him better than he knows himself. Sirius wouldn't have touched classics if his life depended on it.)

Sometimes, Regulus wonders if smashing it would make him feel better anyway. He imagines the pain from many tiny cuts caused by glass shards, the perfect contrast of flawless marble white and vivid crimson, the red abstract art on top of the perfect figurative painting. He finds the image strangely calming.

That's why he never really hits the mirror. He is terrified it would take away the small, macabre comfort he has found in it. He doesn't want to see what would become of him if that too was taken away from him in these increasingly unstable times.

He long ago learned that fantasy is much better than reality. Merlin, it was only seven years ago, and yet he cannot comprehend how he could ever have been so naive, so innocent.

* * *

The last time Regulus looks into the mirror, there are demons in his eyes and black circles under them. There are wrinkles on his brow, and his cheeks seem a tad too hollow. His hands aren't bloody, but neither are they white. They are stained yellow by his attempts to calm his nerves with help from cigarettes. He is immaculately dressed in green and black, and his hair is combed back. He rests his forehead against the cool glass and closes his eyes.

He is no hero. The ugly mark on his left forearm won't let him forget that. He doesn't think heroes have stainless hands, anymore.

He is no hero. And maybe he is a monster, but he isn't a coward. Never was and never will be.

He takes a deep breath, checks that he has the locket with his note, and calls for Kreacher.

 _The cave is dark and cold. But he can still hear seagulls cry in the distance and taste the sea in the salty wind. He doesn't even hesitate to slash his palm. He flinches as the bloody palm connects with the dirty stone. He is hastily casting cleaning and healing charms at it while the wall is opening._

He is no hero, but he always liked those romantic heroes that died young.

 _The dead faces in the water below their boat look at him with large, vacant eyes, and he tries not to look back, tries not to check whether he can find a familiar face. He fails miserably, and only the boat meeting the island's shore manages to snap him out of that morbid search._

Besides, nothing could be worse than being Voldemort's slave.

 _He regrets that thought as soon as he swallows the first gulp, but he continues anyway. He knew it wouldn't be painless and so far, it's not worse than his Lord's Cruciatus anyway. He soon regrets that, thought, too. And then he doesn't think, just begs for it to stop. He doesn't even notice when he starts to plead aloud when his knees meet the rocky terrain when the cup is forced to his lips again by a crying Kreacher. He just wants it to stop and needs water…._

As the cold wet hands are dragging him under, he idly thinks that it is time to find what the humbug around death is really about.


	2. Round 1: Monlit Colours

**Round 1**

 **Beater 2** : Write the NOTP of Beater 1. **Neville/Luna**

 **Optional prompts** : 1. **(word) lovely** 14. **(quote) "The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count". - Theodore Finch, All the Bright Places**

 **Word count** : 1613

 **Disclaimer: While I own the HP series I don't own the rights to it and I don't intend to make any profit from this, just have some fun and beat some bludgers**.

* * *

 **Moonlit Colours**

The first time Neville saw her, she stood firmly apart from others, as she always did. She was in the middle of a crowd of terrified-looking firsties waiting to be sorted. While they nervously moved around, she stood still; her serene smile was as captivating as a siren's call, and her hair shined like starlight. Neville found himself watching the sorting intently and was oddly disappointed when she ended up in Ravenclaw.

By the time he next saw her, he had already forgotten her name. He only remembered how it suited her. He continued to see her around Hogwarts, always emitting that alluring otherworldliness.

When the Yule Ball was announced, he entertained the idea of asking her to be his date, but how does one ask out someone whose name they don't even know? Neville had found it difficult enough to get Ginny to go with him as a friendly date.

He finally learned her name in his fifth year. He learned a lot that year—enough to make his blood boil with impotent rage. After all, Neville was, unfortunately, familiar with bullying and casual cruelty, with it being so often displayed by their schoolmates. It steeled his resolve to learn all that he could in the DA.

It would have been unwise of him to walk Luna to Ravenclaw Tower after their DA meetings, but, _Merlin,_ he wanted to. The more he got to know her, the deeper he fell in love with her. And he kept falling deeper and deeper still.

And then suddenly, they were _heroes_. The Ministry Six. Neville smiled bitterly as he approached the train at the beginning of his sixth year. His grandmother had gushed over him all summer. Well, maybe 'gushed' wasn't right word, but never before had she acted so lovingly towards him. Oh, he _knew_ she loved him, but Merlin, she showed that love with _pride_ this summer. It felt awesome to be someone special and not a disappointment. Sadly, the summer was over. And if he—the clumsy talentless fool, barely better than a Squib—was hailed as a hero, then surely, the pretty Ravenclaw girl would be the newest school celebrity, once again out of his reach.

Neville learned he was wrong. Before long, they both fell back to the fringe—not quite the social pariahs they once were, but still far from being popular. Still, he could not find a way to tell her how he felt.

And then the war came. There was always so much at stake, and he could not even imagine hazarding the few peaceful moments that kept him going by asking her out. When she failed to return from Christmas break, his heart shattered. He soldiered on. What else was there to do? The younger kids counted on him. It was a cold grey infinity until he saw her again. Every moment was so terribly unending and yet looking back it these months left just a formless blur of " _please be alive, please be well_ " in his mind.

After the war, things were so chaotic that he hardly got to see her. As he sat writing his speech for the first anniversary, Neville could scarcely believe it would soon be a year since that battle.

Neville stared at his parchment. He could have sworn it looked right back—outright glared, to be honest. He gulped. Harry, Neville knew, would speak of Snape, and Hermione would surely mention the house-elves… In the end, he decided to write his speech on the offensive use of herbology, and how an attack by plants sends a powerful message, too.

When he finally stood by the Black Lake and listened to the speeches before his, he held the scroll in his sweaty hands and wondered if it was too late to disappear. Even the lovely spring weather, always a pacifier for him, failed to soothe his nerves.

And then Luna took up the speaker's post and he knew it was. _Merlin,_ could one die of sweating too much? Because it seemed like he was going to—or like his body was certainly going to try. She looked so perfect; her robe was coloured in the soft shades of dawn, or maybe dusk, and she spoke of the inhabitants of the castle—human, animal and plants alike—coming out to defend their home. She spoke of children that understood all too well that the fight was theirs, as much as the adults tried to deny it. She spoke of the power of absurdity and how no one expected a sheep to bite and her bite was all the more powerful for it. And, all the while, her usually dreamy, unfocused eyes seemed to look right into the soul of everyone present.

Neville sighed as he glanced down at the creased and twisted scroll in his sweaty hands. That wouldn't do. He dropped the mangled parchment and moved to the edge of the lake to rinse his hands. Then, running a still-wet hand through his hair, he took a deep breath and went to the stage. He made it just in time. He smiled at the crowd, a weird not-calmness settling over him. He opened his mouth and spoke. It was not the speech he had so painstakingly put together.

" _Today, we have heard many tales of bravery—of unity. The Battle of Hogwarts has been described, heroic act by heroic act, and scene by scene. I won't bore you with repeating what has already been said."_

Neville paused, not realising that his eyes were searching the crowd until he felt his heart exclaim ' _found you!'_ as they settled on those beautiful silvery orbs. He took a deep breath and continued, letting the pools of molten moonlight ground him.

" _The problem with many people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count,_ " he said, then he got so lost that he did not even know what he was saying.

" _They describe the battle as if that were the true show of bravery—but I think that it was harder to endure the dark times that came before it. Compared to those days, the battle was almost liberating. One went in knowing that they would either win or die. One went into battle with a sweet sureness that this was the end. It was as liberating as a storm after a long period of stifling, suffocating atmosphere that preceded the storm circling around but not yet there._

" _And I think that it was during these dark, oppressive days that true courage shone through like the proverbial silver lining. And it had so many forms!_

" _Those of us that were at Hogwarts for the majority of it know how brave the teachers were—what they risked every time they didn't report our misbehaviour; every time they looked the other way. We know what the Headmaster risked when, for such a grave offence as breaking into his office, he sent the culprit to the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid. And those of you who weren't there surely have heard similar stories from hospitals, shops, and even from the Ministry itself._

" _But my personal silver lining wasn't these people and these acts. No, it was a woman, young enough to be called a girl in a better time, but a very strong woman nonetheless. Somehow, she found a reason to smile even in those days, and she always had something reassuringly odd to say. As the days grew darker, and as the war touched her closest, she grew more scared, but she did not change. Maybe she was tenser and quieter, but she was always as wonderfully unique as the first time I laid my eyes on her during her sorting._

 _"I often found myself lost in those dreary days, despairing that I had bitten off more than I could chew. But even as I tried to regain my bearings on the dark and treacherous stormy sea, she stood tall and proud like a lighthouse and guided me to a safe path._ "

Neville paused, tearing his eyes away from Luna's to glance at everyone else in the audience before taking a deep breath and continuing his speech.

" _I am sure that every one of you had someone like that—an anchor to keep you grounded during even the most tempestuous of those days._ " Here, Neville paused once more. He took another look at the people gathered there; most of them had a glass of champagne or wine or nonalcoholic beverage in their hands. It was perfect for what he had in mind, so he took a glass of water from the stand before him and, with a distracted wave, changed it into a glass of champagne.

His eyes once again fell prey to those captivating silvery orbs as he finished with: " _I propose a toast to those brave souls, without which there would never be any heroes_." And with that, he raised his own glass in Luna's direction.

* * *

Luna, for her part, tried listening to Neville. She really did. He was her friend and deserved all the support she could possibly give him. After all, he was, for some reason, afraid of speaking before a crowd. Still, the little sapling before her had a bowtruckle hiding in its branches. And so she angled herself in a way that made it seem as though she was watching Neville while she marvelled at it. No matter how irrational she considered his fear to be, she wanted to be there for him. Nevertheless, the bowtruckle was a true sign of the land's healing. It was a really good omen that the creature stayed near such highly populated area. She smiled softly in wonder. Times were clearly changing.


	3. Round 3: Bricks and Mortar

**Round 2 - Where Are We Going?**

 **BEATER 2: Spinners End**

 **OPTIONAL PROMPTS: (poem) Don't Go Far Off — Pablo Neruda, (quote) Freedom is still the most radical idea of all. — Nathaniel Branden), (image).**

 **Word count: 1 301**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own author's rights of Harry Potter series and I make no money from this. I won't say no to virtual cookies or compliments, though. I do live off reviews.**

* * *

 **Bricks and Mortar**

Even when I was young, I was a despondent being. The old bricks in my foundation were sure that I was damned from the very beginning. After all, I was a smaller brick house close to the mill. My only hope was that I was destined for the management. Though, judging by my size, it was more likely that I was intended for the lower echelon of qualified workmen.

Of course, I still sighed with relief when the young pair moved in. As sickeningly sweet and in love as they were, I was always meant to be lived in. And I did find myself reluctantly intrigued when the woman started unpacking large leather-bound volumes. However, it wasn't until the man had left for work that I got truly fascinated by my new charges. Because the woman took out a long wooden stick and performed magic.

 _Magic! I didn't even know magic was real! It was unbelievable._ And then a few weeks later, after much deliberation, she added me to the Floo network. What an interesting experience that was!

And I even got a name. An original name! I became _Spinner's End_.

And so I found myself watching my charges with giddy, hungry eyes like a child hooked on a bedtime story. How the witch did magic and fretted while the man worked; how they ate, laughed, and twirled to the music from the radio. I listened with them to their favourite radio dramas and news. And I cursed my inability to turn around or at least close my eyes as they made love.

The words I had heard the witch quote: _"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all,"_ took on a whole new meaning in these instances.

And so time went on as it is wont to do. The witch's belly inevitably rounded with new life. She positively glowed with happiness, apart from that tense Floo call she took just the day after telling her husband the happy news. She spoke in a foreign language with a woman that must have been her mother, her tone becoming tenser and more clipped the longer they spoke.

One day, after her belly became quite large, her husband took her away. It had felt like they were gone forever, but when my witch came back, she did so proudly holding a tiny babe. She looked tired, but she radiated happiness. Her voice was music to my ears as she gently said, _"Look, Severus, we're home. Isn't it nice?"_

I felt like my paint was melting as the babe gurgled and caught her finger before promptly falling asleep.

When the next day came and the man once again left for work, she opened a new book of poetry. It soon became her favourite and she sometimes read aloud from it in that strange language, her lips curving into a gentle smile. For a few years, everything was alright.

The little boy grew so fast. Soon, he was crawling, uttering his first words, taking his first steps. These days were the days of my life. I shall forever remember them.

They came to an abrupt halt when the man saw his son levitate his toys. The row that followed shook me in more than one way.

I had never known them to argue with such fire, such vitriol. I had not known either of them to not run to the little one when he was crying, yet now they did not seem to notice that they were making him cry with their yelling. It felt as if my very foundations were shaking with the force of those screams, and my walls were burning under their furious gazes. I felt terrible as my charges, my family, fell apart, but I was unable to do anything but listen to the furious screams and desperate wails.

It went downhill from there. For a time, I felt as if I was feverish as the interaction between my charges kept swinging between warm parent-child exchanges and icy glares between the adults.

And I watched over my witch as she read through her book of poems with a wistful smile when her son slept after lunch. I could almost recite her favourite one from memory, even if I did not understand a word of it.

And over the man, as he stared with sadness at his wife's sleeping form.

And over the child that was hurt and confused by his parents' behaviour.

And I treasured the little happy moments that shone all the brighter in the dim atmosphere. Like when the man taught his son to ride a bike and play football or when the boy asked his mother about that poem and she translated it for him. Explaining to him how Spanish — for that was the language the poem was originally written in — was her mother's, his grandmother's, first language and how they spoke of certain things in it in her childhood home.

And I felt my heart break a bit more as she explained to the disbelieving boy that she had left her family's mansion to be with his father because she loved him and the manor felt like a gilded cage. It was written all over the boy's face that he could not believe his parents ever were in love.

And in my heartbreak, I could quite clearly see that the witch loved her husband still, and I appreciated the beauty of those verses all the more because of it.

But then the mill closed. The man could not find new work, so he turned to the bottle. Drunkenness made him aggressive, and so things turned from bad to worse.

I felt nauseous as I made my steps loudly creak when the drunk was on them to warn them and more so when I saw two of my charges huddle together in fear of the third.

I felt ill and only paid rapt attention when my witch whispered promises to her son of the School of Magic and a world that will accept him. And I strained my senses as much as I could when the boy sneaked from the cage that I had become to keep an eye on him. A cage, I who was meant to be a home.

I watched as he fell in love. As fast and hard as his mother fell for his father, loving her just as deeply. I allowed myself to hope that, for him, love would be something better than a golden cage that trapped his heart.

And when, some two years later, he and the girl went to Hogwarts, I recited with his mother the bittersweet words:

 _Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -_

 _because - I don't know how to say it: a day is long_

 _and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station_

 _when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep._

 _Don't leave me, even for an hour, because_

 _then the little drops of anguish will all run together,_

 _the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift_

 _into me, choking my lost heart._

 _Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;_

 _may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance._

 _Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,_

 _because in that moment you'll have gone so far_

 _I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,_

 _Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?_

I already felt that way and he likely hadn't even reached that school yet. And it reminded me of my witch in those days before Severus was born when her husband was at work and she was trapped alone in a world she did not understand. Anxious and fretful, she had waited for him to come back to her.


	4. Round 4: Blooms of Trimmed Tree

**Round 4: Forgotten Families**

 **Beater 2: Shacklebolt family**

 **Optional prompts:** **(scenario) a character is granted three wishes, (colour) silver**

 **Word count: 2 493**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I do not own author rights to the HP series.**

 **Blooms of Trimmed Tree**

I took a deep breath. Steeling myself, I reached for the brass handle and pushed the heavy door open. I took in with wide curious eyes the comfy yet severe-looking study. I had sneaked a few peeks at the mysterious forbidden room before, but this was different.

"You wanted to talk to me, Grandfather?" I asked politely, idly noting that, with a good look, the room did not look as dark as my previous tries to see it had led me to believe.

"Yes; take a seat, lad."

"You'll be going to Hogwarts soon."

I nodded mutely, wondering what this was about. I'd been excited since I got my letter last week, but now dread was settling in my stomach like a lead weight. What if Grandfather didn't think I was ready? Or what if he didn't think it would be appropriate or safe for me to attend?

Grandfather nodded in return and summoned a book with a casual wave of his wand.

I peered at it curiously. My eyes widened when I saw the title: _The Pure-Blood Directory_. I had to read it when I turned ten, just before I was first introduced at a formal gathering.

It was a dull book that I had thought, up until that day, to be purely for decoration. I had never noticed anyone in the family reading it or giving it a second glance. It stood in the little library in the drawing room where my father and grandfather usually met with their business associates.

"You've read this book, right?"

"Yes, Grandfather."

"And you remember which families are listed as the Sacred 28?"

I nodded mutinously.

"Good," he sighed. "Do you also remember what it says about our family?"

I closed my eyes and recited the passage from the book. Its absurdity had helped me learn it. Those presumptuous fascistic pigs knew nothing of our family. That's why they made it sound like we were the same. As if the very idea of someone different successfully blending in with them had never even occurred to them. Fools, the lot of them!

"Well done, lad. I need you to remember that once you go to the school. You'll have to watch yourself. Never let on to the other purebloods that our family doesn't actually conform to that picture."

He sounded so serious while he was saying it, his intent gaze never leaving my eyes. I knew I should answer with something curt like, "Yes, Sir," but what actually left my mouth was: "Does this have anything to do with the recent upgrade of wards and the family encouraging my older brother and cousins to leave the country?"

To my surprise, Grandfather laughed at that. A deep, free sound. But then he seemed to shake the laughter off him and slip back to grim seriousness.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, it does have everything to do with that," he said gravely. "That was very perceptive of you," he added, his voice swelling with pride. He nodded thoughtfully, muttering under his breath: " _I hope you'll not need that as desperately as I fear you will._ "

He then added in a louder voice: "Right now, our family is not a target. I want it to stay that way for as long as possible. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Very well, then go with my blessing to learn how to wield your power. Go, learn, be true to yourself and make me proud."

"Thank you, Grandfather."

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

I looked at my yellow striped tie with a large smile. ' _Yes! I am not in Slytherin,_ ' I mentally cheered as I ran to my new table, sending a cheeky wave to my acquaintances clad in green and silver.

It was a relief to be a Hufflepuff. I knew it meant those stuck-up purebloods who thought themselves so much better than everyone else would underestimate me now.

Besides, once I saw the Common Room, I fell in love. The Hufflepuff Common Room was bright and homely. It was the place where I made some of my best friends. It was nothing like the descriptions that I had heard of the Slytherin Common Room. That had been one of the reasons I did not want to go there. It reminded me of the stuffy parties I sometimes had to attend. All very elegant, cold and impersonal. Only this time, it had the added benefit of being dark and chilly.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Hogwarts had a way of masking how serious things were outside their hallowed halls. Oh, we still got the news — the Daily Prophet arrived every morning — but it wasn't the same as being at home.

Yes, as time went on, more and more often, someone got a black envelope with their morning post, but the sick feeling of dread that penetrated the very air in the rest of the Wizarding World was present only in those moments before the owls landed — except for those who had a grieving friend to soothe. Alas, the rest of the time, the classes, gossip and Marauders' antics were the life of the school. There were no harried and fearful, let alone harmed, visitors. The fighting never even got close to the school.

I was sure most of us would have long since gone mad if it wasn't for these distractions that we so desperately clung to. It was probably the only reason why the teachers let the Marauders run as wild as they did.

It was so easy to forget what was going on in the real world that, when the black envelope landed in my lap, I had to push the hopeful thought ' _it's just a nightmare'_ from my mind before I opened it with shaking fingers.

I was left staring at the name of my grandfather for a while. Then my dorm-mate coaxed me from the Great Hall to our dorm. He prepared our things for the day and was just leading me towards the hospital wing when I snapped out of it and told him I did not need to go there.

I did need the calming draught a week later after the funeral was attacked. Great-Grandfather took me home safely, but I lost my brother that day.

And I lost Great-Grandfather that day, too. His heart gave away upon hearing the news.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

When I got home after my OWLS year, I wasn't surprised that I was being sent to a Muggle survival camp. Both survival skills and blending in with Muggles were certainly priceless skills to have, considering the political climate of the Wizarding World. When I returned from that, Father told me to get ready for the big day the next day. I knew he meant for the ritual that has no English name. Even to Latin, the translation was problematic; the closest my family ever got to one was 'arsen-sententia'.

I felt my heart break and my world shatter when, after Mother ritually cleansed me and sent me away, I arrived before the ancestor representatives.

I stood tall and regal, concentrating on keeping my posture upright and breathing regular.

I was not going to cry, not now, not here. _But gods! I wanted to._ Where my great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were supposed to stand, stood my father, a distant older cousin and my mother wearing male clothes and a fake beard. The litany of names of those who would stand there if they were alive rung through my head like ringing in the inner ear. _Painful and unstoppable._

They were supposed to be the mouth of our ancestors and laid on me their wishes and hopes for me and our family because I was no longer a child and so was strong enough to shoulder them. Today, I was to become a young man. I didn't feel any different to the way I felt yesterday and I knew little would truly change for me.

I would still be protected; I would still be looked down on as on child by anyone who wasn't family. Even if I was no longer a child because childhood was a luxury that was not affordable in a war. Especially not in a civil one.

Nevertheless, I stood impassively and listened to the solemn voices.

"Are you prepared to stand on your own?" asked my father.

"Yes," I replied, surprised by how steady my voice sounded.

"To swallow your pride and ask for advice and help when you need it?" asked Anansi.

"Yes," I said resolutely.

"To stand tall for what you believe in?" asked my mother, finishing the questioning.

"Yes."

 _"Then we entrust you with our hopes and the blessings of our house,_ " they chorused in perfect synchronisation. Their three voices blended into something more — into the voice of the hallowed ancestor.

"We gave you life; we ask you to uphold our ideals," Father chanted.

"We gave you the education; we ask you to use it. Stay true to yourself and survive," Anansi continued, his voice unusually deep and serious.

"We taught you our ways and made sure your roots were deep in a solid yet rich soil. We ask you to grow to your own calling, your own right. We ask you to impart our ideals to the new generation."

"Honoured Ancestors! I hear your plea! And I shall try my best to do as you ask. So mote it be!" I declared and bowed deeply.

Then, I brewed a tea from rooibos and carefully poured it into little handleless cups. I spilt the first one over the family totem in lamentation for the departed ancestors. Then, with careful moves, I offered a cup to each representative. Each of them silently took the offering. When we all had one, I raised mine in a silent salute, and they did the same. We drank our tea in serene silence.

Later, when I was finally alone in my room, I let the tears fall. I remembered what Grandfather had asked of me all those years ago. I was already a target, though. Everyone who did not stand with Voldemort was.

I silently padded on my bare feet from my room and to the family grimoire. " _I swear I'll use my talents to ensure that I won't have to have the same talk with my son as you had with me, Grandfather. I won't compromise myself. I will stand tall, yet I'll bow if it means I'll be able to fight another day. I will make you proud._ "

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Once again, I was sitting at a Welcoming Feast. As Head Boy this time. But this time, it was different. Even the younger students were caught in the sombre, fearful mood. Every table held way too many empty spots.

I idly wondered how anyone could expect us to pay attention to our lessons when it seemed like, soon, there would be no Wizarding World for us to live in. I pitied the terrified-looking firsties about to be sorted. What sort of life was there for them? How many families would be targeted once the names of the new Muggle-born students reached that monster?

I clenched my fists under the table and, with a hopefully not obviously fake smile, welcomed the first Hufflepuff of this Sorting. Last year, Anansi had gone into hiding somewhere, likely abroad. He sent us letters with voice-activated Portkeys that could bring family and those willingly invited by the family through the wards, but for safety reasons, he hadn't let us know where he went. But Father was out there fighting and Mother seemed to be slowly disappearing before our eyes; the whole summer, she had kept growing thinner and paler.

I sat at the table, silently woving to be there for the younger kids and praying that Mum wouldn't disappear on me in the meantime.

I'll be a watchful Order wannabe for now since, to be a fully-fledged Order member, one has to have graduated, as opposed to the Death Eaters.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Many people remember with fondness the first of November 1981. I do not. That day might now be counted as the end of the First Wizarding War, but it wasn't. It was the mobilization for the last strikes. It was the day I found out that He was gone.

That the vibrant, righteous Lily and lively, mischievous James were dead. And that, although the accusation sounded as likely as the sky spontaneously changing colours from its usual blue to magenta pink, Sirius had willingly betrayed James. It was one of the last days that the light side received loses.

The news of Voldemort's death had caused numerous parties, but it did not lessen the grief that came with yet another black envelope.

The Wizarding World was entering peace, but all I could think of was that it was going to be just Mum and me now.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

When Harry Potter said Voldemort was back, I knew what to do. There never was any wisdom in ignoring potential threats. Besides, even Marauders wouldn't joke about something like that. I wrote to Anansi to see if he would be willing to set up some safe houses. I joined the Order. I stood tall and fought in any way I could because doing anything else would be a betrayal of everything I ever believed in.

And if, during the time I was scouring the continent in search of Sirius Black, I stopped to drink rooibos with Anansi and some other distant family, the Ministry really did not need to know that, did they? And it was great to see them once again in person, to be part of the family.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Paradoxically, since the war ended, I had been even more stressed and stretched thin. Being the Minister in the post-war years was no fun, but I would like to think that I managed to get rid of the corruption that had been so prevalent in the Ministry since before I could remember.

See, Grandfather, Father, Mother? I fulfilled your wishes. I survived. I did not let my morals bend, I did not let my ideals get twisted by sweat-talkers or those who tried to threaten me. I upheld our family's honour. I reshaped our world into one more suited for kids so children actually would have the chance to be children.

I even taught young Percival our ideals.

I hope I made you proud.

And now, I am about to bring this beautiful witch into our family and raise with her our own beautiful, perfect kids.

I fulfilled my own wishes. I survived, became someone you could be proud of and made sure my children wouldn't grow up in a corrupt world. I fought my own battles until finally, _finally,_ the war was truly _won_.


	5. Chapter 5: Stubby's Double

**Round 5 - What's in a Name?**

 **BEATER 2: Poppy (as inspired by Madam Pomfrey): Write about a character being treated, or treating someone, as a consolation prize.**

 **Optional prompts: 2 (object) thorn, 6 (picture) (overgrown gravestones) .  , 13 (colour) ruby red**

 **Word count: 1923**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I do not own author rights to the HP series.**

* * *

 **Stubby's Double**

I laughed as I read through the letter I had received from my godson. The bark-like sound was almost foreign to my own ears. It had been too long since I could laugh freely, but Harry managed to startle a few laughs from me when he was there and even when he wasn't, it seemed.

I certainly hoped the boy was exaggerating when he wrote about 'the pink toad' and 'her ability to suck all the happiness from a room, oddly reminiscent of the effect close proximity to a Dementor may cause, but with less style and finesse'.

Once I stopped laughing, I shuddered at the image of a pink toad-Dementor hybrid. Then, I returned to reading, occasionally chuckling at the witty descriptions even as my heart sank at what was not said. The exclusion of pretty much the whole of the student body could only mean that the smear campaign was more successful than I expected, which, coupled with the Ministry's interference at Hogwarts, wasn't good. Not good at all.

It wasn't until I reached the post scriptum that I was thrown back down memory lane. But this time, it wasn't the grim once-upon-a-time Grimmauld Place reminded me of all the time, but the bittersweet moments before the war had truly torn the family apart. It hit me like a stampeding hippogriff.

 _I sneaked from the house by one of the ways I had not used in ages. I had to use my Animagus form to fit through certain places as some of the passages and windows proved smaller than I remembered, probably because I had been smaller the last time I used them. I was just glad it was likely the last time I would have to use them; I'd be of age come November and I wasn't even planning to spend the whole summer here._

 _This was too important to risk getting caught by Mother while I tried to sneak out through the front door, even if pulling along my guitar in my Animagus form was a pain. Once I was safely out and few blocks away, I called the Knight Bus. The ride was a blur as the manic pace matched my nervous restlessness. An eternity later, but still too soon, I walked into a little club called Kelpie's Den._

 _Stepping inside, I gulped, absently caressing my guitar. This was it. I would try out for a position in my favourite wizarding band. I would give it my all and hope for the best. I was a bit early, so I made my way to the bar and ordered myself a Butterbeer. That was when I noticed a familiar figure._

" _What are you doing here, Regulus?" I asked crossly._

" _Do you even need to ask?" came the teasing reply. But, when I failed to react, he continued in a serious tone: "I came to support my brother."_

" _But how did you even know I would be here?" I asked. I had hardly spoken with my brother in what felt like forever. We had been drifting apart since I started at Hogwarts._

" _What sort of brother would I be if I didn't know?" he asked, pouting and sounding genuinely hurt._

 _I gulped, looking him over. He was wearing a casual blue-green robe that I didn't remember seeing on him before. He sounded more like the brother I thought I had lost years ago when I returned from my first year at Hogwarts to find a prim and proper pureblood heir in his place. The casual clothes fit in with that old image of him perfectly._

" _An estranged or uniformed one?" I tried since I certainly hadn't told him about this._

" _Maybe, but I am a resourceful Slytherin, so I am here to support you."_

" _Then wish me luck, Reggie," I replied, downing my Butterbeer._

" _Good luck, Siri."_

 _I made my way to the podium where the songwriter of the Hobgoblins was calling for the wannabe singers like me to gather. There weren't all that many of us hopefuls_ — _me, someone who looked eerily similar to me, a redheaded man (likely a Weasley with that hair colour) and a man with dirty-blond hair._

I blinked in surprise. I must have sneaked out the same road as in my memory as I was blinking at familiar surroundings in grayscale. My nose was assaulted by the filthy smell of wet streets full of smog and littered with trash. I shook my head and changed back into a man; there was no reason to stay in dog form in this dirty back-alley of Muggle London. What did I even do with that letter? Ah, I put it into my breast pocket. I spread it out once again, but yes, the post scriptum did say that I couldn't possibly have murdered the Muggles since I was apparently singing on stage as the lead singer of the Hobgoblins under my artist name, Stubby Broadman.

I absentmindedly refolded the letter and put it back into the pocket, casting Notice-Me-Not and Disillusionment Charms to avoid being detected as I felt that memory pulling me back.

 _I really didn't remember much between going there and being told that Stubby Broadman was the one to make it. Almost immediately after that, Xeno, who had come to support the dirty-blond man, Shieq, said that I could double for Broadman if he ever needed it._

 _Romneya Papaver, the pretty song-writer of the Hobgoblins who also played the drums, laughed at that. "We would have to use some makeup to make you appear older." She tilted her head as she examined me._

" _I'll contact you if we ever have need of such double?" she asked, blinking at me with doe-like brown eyes and puckering her ruby red lips._

" _Of course, my Lady," I replied, bowing in mock deference and swallowing my disappointment. When I straightened, Regulus handled me a mochitto._

 _I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "Don't you think now is not the time for a celebrative drink?"_

 _He raised one eyebrow and replied in a 'duh' tone: "It's a consolation prize."_

" _I thought we used ice-cream for that."_

" _Shut up and drink."_

" _Thanks, Reggie," I replied and followed his orders._

 _Then, there was a blinding flash. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision. When I turned to Regulus with a witty comment about what just happened on the tip of my tongue, he wasn't there. At first, I could not find him. After a while, I did. By then, my glass was almost empty because while I would never admit it, the sudden flash and his disappearance scared me a little. He smiled at me apologetically and said: "I have to go soon. If I stay much longer, Mother will start questioning my excuse."_

" _What did you tell her?"_

" _That I was going to see Snape so he could explain to me the peculiarities of the reactions of belladonna and wormwood and what could enhance them."_

" _Snivellius?" I asked skeptically._

" _He is a half-blood with a great talent," he replied, already heading for the door. I took another sip from my drink. Regulus knew more about Potions than the rest of the immediate family combined and did not really care for Snape, but Mother would eat that up, coming from him. She would just assume that was where Regulus' seeming aptitude for Potions came from._

 _But then, she wouldn't be the only one believing him blindly since someone either sold him alcoholic mochitto despite him being noticeably underage or that consolation prize wasn't from him. Sneaky, brother, sneaky._

I blinked. I had once again let my legs lead me somewhere without thinking and it seemed they took the trip down memory lane more literally than I because I found myself facing the gates to an overgrown graveyard. It was located close to Grimmauld Place and I knew it well, even if I rarely used the front gate.

I went through, marvelling at how the place had stayed mostly the same. Soon, I was cursing because it was even more overgrown than it used to be. Every step now brought up a new pricking sensation as I managed to catch myself on another thorn. I didn't remember this place being so thorny, but that might be memory optimism or the fact that thorns were more visible in the daylight. We did destroy many of our clothes here when we were children. Regulus and I loved this place; the wild plants made the perfect place to play on being explorers or magiozologists or treasure hunters. There I was, close to the tomb with a pretty statue on top that we used in many a play as a place where the treasure was hidden. A perfect lost city or whatever else fitted our jungle-located make-believe.

I smiled as I took those last few steps and climbed on top of the tomb. Then, I noticed it. The Statue of Justice had a tube resting in one of the bowls of her scales. Hesitantly, I reached for it.

Who would leave a tube here? And why? I didn't dare believe it could be from him. But I couldn't help myself; I hoped it was.

With shaking hands, I managed to open it. With a bit of effort, I pried a rolled-up poster from it. And I felt more than saw something else fall from the tube. Maybe a piece of parchment; it was hard to tell in the moonlight. I silently cursed and put the now-empty tube and rolled poster — or whatever it was — in my left hand before crouching down. I petted the ground with my right hand, squinting my eyes until I reached the piece of parchment. I spread it out across my leg, situating it so that it was illuminated by the weak light of the moon. Yeah, it was a letter.

I pressed my left hand against it and took my wand into my right hand, casting Lumos. It was from Regulus. Suddenly, my mouth went dry. It was from Reggie to me. The wand slipped from my suddenly slack fingers.

'Oh, Reggie.'

In the distance, a siren screached. I blinked. I reached for the wand and put it back into its holster. Then, I returned the papers to the tube and stood up. I needed to look at this somewhere warm and dry. A place to sit and a table to uncurl the larger thing wouldn't hurt either.

The way back was a blur. Before I knew it, I was standing in the drawing room, casting locking charms on the door. I lit up an oil lamp on the table and put the things from the tube on the desk. I decided to first spread out the larger rolled-up thing first. It turned out to be a poster. A poster of a photo of me and the Hobgoblins standing before the bar in the Kelpie's Den. The names of all of the Hobgoblins, Stubby Boardman included, were signed on the bottom. I blinked away tears. Regulus must have been planning to give this to me when I returned. But I returned quite late and got into argument with Mother and ended up fleeing to the Potters' house instead. I never even said goodbye to him.

I blinked away tears. He wasn't in the photo. But he should have been. That night was the last time we acted like the brothers we were.

I was not going to cry. I was not. Not over Reggie's idea of a consolation prize.

* * *

 **AN: I leave the letter to readers' imagination. This literal trope is called open ending and I am fond of it.**

.


	6. Chapter 6: Riddle's Monster

**Round 6 - Cult Classics**

 **Each position has a different film assigned to them, which you must use as inspiration for your story. (The story does not need to directly follow the plot of the film if you don't want it to.)**

 **BEATER 2: Frankenstein**

 **Optional prompts: 3.** **(quote) For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. — H. L. Mencken, 12. (poem) A Walking Song — J. R. R. Tolkien, 15. (word) coast**

 **Word count: 1730**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I do not own author rights to the HP series.**

* * *

 **Riddle's Monster**

 _It is said that before you die, you see your life flash before your eyes. Thomas Riddle would tell you that no such thing happened to him. He would describe how a man that could have walked straight from his nightmares waltzed into his parlour just when the family was about to move away after dinner._

 _He would tell you how he had no time to even glance at his parents before he died. And he would also tell you that if it was not for the green light that sped at him, he might have believed that it was the shock of seeing Him that killed him._

 _But of course, dear readers, he is entirely unable to tell you such a thing since he is in fact quite dead — murdered in his own home._

 _By whom? you might ask. Well, that's quite a story._

 _You want to hear it? Well, then, let me think a bit as to where to begin._

 _When Tom was young, he fell in love. He fell fast and hard. Nothing unusual about that, you might say. Only, everything about it was unusual. The girl wasn't beautiful — or even pretty. She was sort of short of being plain because she looked worn out and world-weary. Her clothes were washed out and patched, and she wasn't as clean as anyone from a well-off family would expect from others. She might have been the cleanest and the sanest one from her family, but that truly wasn't saying much._

 _In her defence, I suppose you could say that she wasn't stupid. She wasn't vain, snobbish or afraid of hard work. Still, many a tongue wagged over Tom's sudden infatuation with her._

 _He never told anyone exactly what about her caught his eyes, or why he suddenly left her. Why one day he was smitten with her like he had been for a whole year prior and the next, he cursed her name and her very existence. But I will tell you now the truth he never revealed: he left her because she stopped feeding him the love potion that had ensnared him in the first place._

 _He left her penniless and heavy with child. And for all her faults, Merope was a good mother. She did all she could for the child. It wasn't much. Actually, her best meant that the baby lived past its birth. She could have gotten rid of it before; it certainly would have been easier for her. But she didn't; she gave the unborn child all her care and love. She tried to get its father to take some responsibility for it with the ferocity of a mother bear, the bravery of a lioness and the cunningness of a snake. She tried valiantly but vainly._

 _So the child was born in an orphanage. The mother named her son and died. The father did not care. The son did not know._

 _Little Tom Marvolo Riddle had grown up in a world torn apart by war. No one had time for the ever-increasing number of orphans, and the state could not afford to pour more money into old, decaying orphanages when it needed to invest in defence. He grew up in a place that would be sad — even in less tragic times._

 _But he was different. He inherited the gift of magic from his mother's destitute noble line. Children might not be purposefully cruel, but they are observant — more observant than adults and less tolerant. They can spot the difference as surely as a piranha sniffs out blood in water. Actually, they generally react in the same way as piranhas, too._

 _Little Tom, however, was no injured prey. He knew he was different. He knew he had a weird power. And so he learned to control it. And, like all children, he didn't see what was wrong with getting even, or a bit of sweet revenge. Unlike most children, he could be patient. Revenge, after all, was a dish best served cold._

 _It wasn't long before even the adults noticed that something wasn't quite right about him. That he wasn't simply the quiet, intelligent boy they took him for. He was someone other children, even the older ones, feared. Soon, he was followed by whispers: "unnatural", "devil's spawn", "witcher", "monster", and so on._

 _Tom knew three things: a) he was different, b) being feared was better than being bullied, and c) if it made him a monster, so be it._

 _Then, he learned that there were others like him. Witches and wizards, they called themselves. For a while, he dared to hope. For just a moment, he dreamt that he was not a monster to be feared or an outcast to be stepped on, but a powerful wizard that could change the world for the better._

 _But, alas, he soon learned that it was not to be. He was a nobody. He had no family to teach him how to manoeuvre the delicate climate of the wizarding politics that seemed so still and unchanging on the surface yet was anything but that. No family to teach him to recognize the hidden and dangerous undercurrents and warn him about powerful players._

 _Alas, he was less than nobody because he was in the one house in the school where family and blood meant everything, and where having wizarding blood was equivalent to being human. And somehow, he had managed to gain a powerful enemy even before he was sorted. Yet he refused to be an outcast._

 _He was a wizard, and as far as he was concerned, the magic had to come from somewhere. So he searched and schemed and established his place in Slytherin House through the only means open to him: power, the one thing that's universally understood._

 _The one moment luck smiled his way was in his search for his mother's family._

 _How does that tie in with the murdered Tom Riddle? Haven't you guessed yet, dear one? No? Then listen closely._

 _Although when little Tom had yet to learn that wizards existed, he thought nothing much of his ability to speak to the snakes, it was now a valuable lead. For Parseltongue, the ability to speak with snakes, was a rare magical ability. So rare, in fact, that it led him straight to the bull's eye — or actually, his magical uncle and grandfather._

 _For such a bright boy, it wasn't hard to put the story together from there. At the same time, however, he first got blood on his hands. It had been an honest accident, but it cemented something within him._

 _You see, heroes do not murder innocent schoolgirls. Promising politicians with powerful enemies could not afford to have such literal skeletons in their wardrobe, let alone the moaning ghost that now haunted Tom._

 _No, Tom wasn't a hero and he doubted that he could change the Wizarding World through politics beneath the heavy weight of Dumbledore's suspicious glare._

 _He wasn't a hero, and his hands were already tainted — so why not bathe them in blood? After all, absolute rulers could change the word much more swiftly than simple politicians._

 _He had already been called a monster. Being a Dark Lord sounded great compared to that, even if it might have been in accordance to old Mencken's bonmot:_ " _For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong."_

 _So you see, as it happened, the son_ — _and the family resemblance was too strong for anyone to doubt it_ — _had no problem with murdering his own father and grandparents. And so Tom Marvolo Riddle, not yet even of age, upped his body count and decided that being Dark Lord had a decidedly alluring ring to it._

 _After all, it meant that he could deal simply and effectively with stupidity instead of having to try and argue with the many old fools that sat in the Wizengamot. And with that cheerful thought, the youngster tore his gaze away from the cooling body of his despicable Muggle father and started to hum:_

 _Upon the hearth the fire is red,_

 _Beneath the roof there is a bed;_

 _But not yet weary are our feet,_

 _Still round the corner we may meet_

 _A sudden tree or standing stone_

 _That none have seen but we alone_

 _He cheerfully summoned money from his father's room, deciding that no one would miss them. After all, the pathetic excuse of a human being still lived with his parents — hiding here from his past like the spineless coward he was. The only remaining Riddle sneered at the thought and walked from the manor. He counted the money and decided it would be enough to pay for his time away on the coast. Just perfect, considering that after that, he would have to work on establishing his new position. And you know what they say: there is no rest for the wicked._

 _And so Tom Marvolo Riddle cheerfully walked away from Little Hangleton, still singing, in decidedly false tune, the walking song:_

 _Tree and flower and leaf and grass,_

 _Let them pass! Let them pass!_

 _Hill and water under sky,_

 _Pass them by! Pass them by!_

 _Still round the corner there may wait_

 _A new road or a secret gate,_

 _And though we pass them by today,_

 _Tomorrow we may come this way_

 _And take the hidden paths that run_

 _Towards the Moon or to the Sun._

 _Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,_

 _Let them go! Let them go!_

 _Sand and stone and pool and dell,_

 _Fare you well! Fare you well!_

 _Home is behind, the world ahead,_

 _And there are many paths to tread_

 _Through shadows to the edge of night,_

 _Until the stars are all alight._

 _Then world behind and home ahead,_

 _We'll wander back to home and bed._

 _Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,_

 _Away shall fade! Away shall fade!_

 _Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,_

 _And then to bed! And then to bed!_

 _He walked through the night with a spring in his step and greeted the first rays of the sun with a content smile. He had just paid his creator his due and had a good plan on how to make sure no other poor soul had to go through the same ordeal he had._

 _Whoever said that monsters could not change the world?_


	7. Round 7: C'est la Vie

**Round 7:**

 **BEATER 2: Write about a time where wizardkind has gotten so used to Muggle technology that they find themselves using magic lesser and lesser.**

 **Optional prompts: 3** **(action) charging an electronic device** **, 14** **(word) cartoons**

 **Word count: 1605**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I do not own author rights to the HP series.**

 **C'est la Vie**

When the women started talking about fearing for when all their kids left for Hogwarts and what houses it looked like the little ones would enter, Harry drifted off from the conversation. He loved his kids, don't get him wrong, but there was something to be said about the blessed calm of an empty house.

He surveyed the people around the table. Most of his male friends looked ready to come up with an excuse to leave their wives alone for that particular discussion. However, it was one of his female friends — an honorary younger sister, to be honest — that caught his interest.

Luna's eyes were shadowed and her skin seemingly paled slightly before she made her excuses. Before Harry could think much about it, he stood up to follow her. Luna might be generally odd, but she took as much pride in her twin sons as any woman at that table, and yet, she was fleeing from friendly speculation about Hogwarts Houses. Something wasn't right and Harry decided to find what.

He caught up to her in the apple orchard. " _Luna, what's wrong?_ " he asked because the straightforward approach always worked best with her.

" _It's the twins. They weren't even born in Britain, you know. Sometimes, I wonder if I should be filling their heads with thoughts of Ilvermorny instead of Hogwarts, because what if they end up having to go there? And then I remember that I haven't witnessed them doing accidental magic yet and neither has Rolf. Then, I feel really silly all of a sudden, you know_?"

Harry did. Luna must have been really worried about this for her to babble like that. He could see why; the twins were three already. Now, it was not uncommon for a child to be a late bloomer, but magical twins were rare. Not just because twins in general were rare, but because they were either a force to be reckoned with or not magical at all.

And so he promised Luna to ask Minerva about it.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Minerva checked the Hogwarts Register for him. He knew from the expression on her face alone that Lorcan and Lysander weren't on it.

He sighed and asked her for the contact information for Ilvermorny. The twins wouldn't even be missing the family friendly squabbles about Houses - it just would shift from their parents and Grandfather to their Great-grandmother and Great-grandaunt - if they were on Ilvermorny registry instead, but Harry hadn't much hope for that being the case. Still, he had to check before getting back to Luna. Leaving her with false hope wouldn't be right and it would be unfair to the twins. If they were Squibs, there was another world for them to explore. It might lack fantastic beasts and brooms, but it had computer games, bikes, skates and such.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Harry barely resisted the urge to tear the letter in his hands to shreds and then burn it. Instead, he sent a Patronus message to Luna. He hadn't even realised he had been lying to himself before. But he had been, he remembered how good it had been for him to explore a new world and conveniently forget that leaving Muggle World behind did not put any sort of barrier between him and his loved ones. How could he had been so stupid?

He had just enough time to read through two reports before the end of his shift and their drollness should calm him down. Just how do you tell your good friends that they can never teach their children all that they know? How do you tell a mother that she'll lose her kids to a foreign world or be forced to watch them be treated as a mix between invalids and second class citizens?

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

" _Sshhh. Ssshhh. They'll be alright. They have you and Rolf. Ssshhh,_ " Harry tried to console her, feeling hopeless. He had hugged her close as soon as she started to cry, but he didn't know what to do now. He hated seeing her crying. He hated that she had every reason to, even if her kids were two wonderful, healthy boys, her husband loved her to bits and she loved her job. She shouldn't have to feel like this was a tragedy, and yet…

And yet, he understood perfectly why she did. It wasn't right. His blood began to boil under his skin. This was wrong. Harry bit his lip. It was wrong and he wouldn't stand for it. And just like that, he suddenly knew what to tell her.

" _Hey, you know I'll be there to help and so will Hermione. This might actually force our stubborn Weasley spouses to learn something about the Muggle World. And look at Jacob from Newt's stories. Just because they are No-Majs doesn't mean they won't love the wonders of our world. We'll make it alright. You know us. The DA works best together and we always look out for our own. I think it is time to bring the British Wizarding World out of its exile. It may scream and kick, but we'll bring them into the twenty-first century._ "

He wouldn't insult his friend with meaningless platitudes, but he could promise her to fight and remind her that they wouldn't be fighting alone. Heavens knew his friends had ambushed him to make him listen to that sentiment often enough in the past.

 **Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip~~oOoooOoooOo~~Time Skip**

Harry's eyes slid to the side bar. The time read 11:00. He still had one hour of work before he could go. The birthday party was due to start in two hours, so he had taken the afternoon off. Still, he needed to pick up his order from the e-shop's delivery point and get a quick lunch first. He stretched and smiled. He was sure the new headphones would be appreciated; they should go over well with the phones the twins were going to get from their parents and the charmed casings Rose and Al had for them. They had all known that Rolf and Luna would cave in and buy them the mobiles the twins so wanted, the ones that allowed them to keep in touch even during expedition trips into the middle of Amazon jungle.

Which reminded him. He checked his mobile. No new messages or missed calls, but his battery was quite low. He hastily pulled his reserve charger from his last drawer and put the mobile into it to be charged. It wouldn't do to pull it out from his coat in the shop to dictate the order number and find it out of power.

With a sigh, he forced himself to concentrate on the reports before him. He paused and, using ctrl+f, checked three reports for Travers' name. When the results came in, he cursed.

" _Collins! Get your ass over here!_ "

By the time he had grilled Collins over his impressions from interrogating Travers, Harry's lunch break had officially started. It didn't stop him from hastily barking orders as he turned off his computer and collected his mobile.

Then, he threw on his coat and strolled out through his department. His lips quirked into a smile. Sure, there were still some older Aurors who refused to learn to work with computers and thought the mobiles were the work of the devil, but they could only get away with the latter if they knew how to send messages through a Patronus Charm.

When he had promised Luna that they would pull the Wizarding World into the twenty-first century, he had never really considered how much it would help their relationship with the Muggle World. It had never even crossed his mind that the Ministry of Magic would start using computers, but here he was, strolling through the DMLE, and a desk without one was a rarity.

Of course, it wasn't entirely caused by breaking wizardkind's reluctance to adopt Muggle technology. No, it was largely due to the amazing progress on the shielding against electromagnetic impulses. The technology that was now standard was unimaginably good in comparison to what he remembered from his childhood. The changes still occasionally took his breath away. And not just because letting the kids watch their favourite cartoons in the morning meant that the little rascals had stopped charging into his and Ginny's bedroom to wake them up.

It had been a hard fight, but he could see in the way the Aurors checked their emails before rushing out to get lunch, and in the way, even Minerva preferred to send emails or call over Flooing, that it had brought a lasting change.

Even if another war broke out — and it sure looked like it might with the recent rise in terrorist activity and the inevitable impending fall of the IS — the changes were here to stay.

The DA had changed the world — or at least the British Isles. They had done it out of love and Harry would forever cherish the irony caused by their first success with the operation Integration occurring in December 2012.

Now, the only ones still clinging to old ideas, still refusing to learn, were those who didn't know. Harry himself sometimes missed the utter out-wordiness that had greeted him when he first entered the Wizarding World. But an impression, a fond memory, could never compare to the good the change brought.

After all, it was an entirely Muggle superstition that the world would end in 2012.


	8. Round 8: Inter Arma Silent Musae

**Round 8 - The Wonderful World of Head Canon**

 **BEATER 2: Write follow headcanon: [Chaser 1, crimsonvortex (Kat), Kestrels]-Regulus Black was in love with a muggleborn student during his years at Hogwarts**

 **Optional prompts: 5** **(image)** **hellobaby. Deviantart art/Running-away-from-blue-171028854** **; 9 (scenario) A character is sent to Azkaban**

 **Word count: 2 334  
**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I do not own author rights to the HP series. I also don't own the Irish myth that I quote in the translation of Douglas Hyde from University of Cork, Ireland: CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts): Longes mac nUislenn ( .ie /published /T301020 /index. html)**

* * *

 **Inter Arma Silent Musae**

" _ **In the war, the Muses are silent. Alas, men shouldn't be."**_

 _ **Král a klaun, Karel Kryl**_

When Hermione Granger wrote her famous book series called _The Unsung Heroes,_ there were stories she refused to document. As unimaginable as it once seemed to her, she was forced to accept that some stories were too personal, too full of raw emotions, to be put onto paper. Some wounds were simply too painful to revisit in such a way.

When she made that decision, she was laughing through her tears because oh, the irony.

She started the series to clear names, to let people know that the Blacks weren't as dark as their name, that Slytherins could be brave, braver even than most of the Gryffindors. She had made sure to include heroes from every house as well as house-elves. Hermione had been leaving Regulus, whose story had inspired her to even start this project, to be the cherry on the top.

She hadn't known that he kept a journal, but once she found out, she had read it, then cried over it. She had sat in her comfy armchair crying her eyes out, and somehow, her sobs had turned to chortling laughter as the irony hit her. Hermione started her series mainly because of him and yet she'd have to omit a good half of the story.

And what a story she'd be omitting. If it weren't about real people, she'd be stunned by such a moving story. Maybe she could change names and twist the realities a bit, to eventually publish it as a fictional story one of these days. It certainly would be successful if she did.

* * *

" _What story, Daddy?" mumbled a blue-haired boy sleepily._

" _The one about how your cousin_ — _twice removed, I think_ — _Regulus fell in love, how he loved, fought and grieved. Would you like to hear it, Teddy?"_

 _The boy nodded against the man's chest. The man, Harry, took a deep breath and a gulp of warm tea before launching into another monologue. This one, though, was about times long since past, or so they seemed to the little boy._

* * *

It started with a butterfly. It wasn't an ordinary butterfly, mind you, but a magical one. Its wings were adorned by the most enchanting shade of blue. It instantly caught Regulus' attention.

He had thought that he was alone in wandering of the grounds that early in the morning. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was already painted soft greys and blues with streaks of orange and pink.

But Regulus supposed a little sadly that he wasn't the only one who found sleep to be elusive. The butterfly was truly mesmerizing, so he followed it. He couldn't have told you what he thought he would find, but it certainly wasn't this.

Regulus stared with open-mouthed awe at the beautiful sight before him. For the butterfly had led him to a secluded clearing on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where a goddess was dancing. A flight of butterflies trailed after her.

It had to be a goddess, for surely no woman could be so perfect. Her skin was pure ivory, not even her bare feet were reddened, her hair as black as night and eyelashes long and dark like temptation itself. She wore a simply cut, sinfully short sleeveless dress without shame and had no goosebumps from the cold. She certainly couldn't be one of his fellow students, whom he all knew on sight. He would have noticed if such a beauty walked the same corridors as he, wouldn't he?

The blue butterfly that he had been following joined the ones trailing the raven-haired beauty. And Regulus found himself wondering whether it too envied the one butterfly that sat on the goddess' hair.

He lost track of time gazing at the beauty, who was surely not meant for mortals' eyes.

He did not know how long he stood there, eyes wide with wonder. But in what could have been an eternity or a blink of an eye later, he was pinned by a cold glare from the clearest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Those captivating orbs were a light shade of blue and cold like ice.

The goddess' cheeks reddened with the most adorable blush. Her back had straightened, her arms had fallen laxly to her side, and she held her head high as she walked past him, trailed by blue butterflies. He watched from the edge of the forest as she went straight to the front doors of Hogwarts and slipped into the castle.

His mind was blank, save for one thought: ' _Maybe I was wrong; maybe she is a schoolmate. Oh, Merlin, let it be so.'_

He had been wrong. It took him two days to find out that she was a fourth year Ravenclaw and that her name was Diana Dray.

It took him almost two weeks to approach her casually in the library while she was browsing the Charms section and ask whether she was looking for something specific. She had looked at him from under her long lashes with apprehension and stuttered that she was looking for keyed Charms to animate pictures. He recommended a few titles as he grabbed the book he originally came for, and they spent an afternoon in comfortable silence at the same table in the library.

It was a slow start to a beautiful friendship. By the time Yule came around, they were an item and he refused to go home, saying he was too busy with school. She had gone home, but he truly was busy. Not so much with studying, though, as with planning.

Because he was in love. He couldn't imagine living his life without her. He didn't want to. And yet, he could either stay away from her and hope she'd survive the hell their country was turning into, follow his brother's lead and paint big targets on both of their backs without having as many people willing to protect them, or… or he could be really clever and cunning. So he plotted.

She wasn't Juliet; there was no reason to make enemies of her family. And he was no Romeo. Yes, he loved her, even if it was wrong of him in his family's eyes to love a Muggle-born witch. But he refused to be Romeo because he was a Slytherin and using his cunning to make ambitious plans succeed was in his nature. Even if some wouldn't think that living peacefully with the love of his life was all that ambitious.

By the end of the break, he had decided on the course of his actions. He would withdraw the monthly maximum from his trust vault, month by month, he would study his hardest to get the best possible grades, and they would arrange to transfer to Ilvermorny. They would start in his sixth year. As a transfer student, he would not have to submit his wand for the summer since he would officially start there in September and by the summer between his sixth and seventh years, he would be of age.

There would also be a change of name involved.

It was a simple and flexible plan and he couldn't wait to hear what his sweet Diana thought of it.

When he told her, she understood, deciding to get her parents on their side during the Easter Break. They hashed out when he would sneak out of Hogwarts to be introduced to them and explain whatever uncertainties her explanation left.

It went surprisingly well. Regulus counted himself lucky that he managed not to offend anyone despite it being the first time he met Muggles. Not to mention that he was reeling over how well they took to him. His interaction with Diana's parents were more cordial than with his own, despite the fact that he called them Mr and Mrs Drake the whole time.

Even the apprehension O.W.L.s caused paled in the face of his jittery nerves mixed with utter elation as he thought about the July 20th. The day he'd go to stay with Barty for a bit, or so his Mother would think. In truth, he'd go have his name changed, have his money transferred and buy a Muggle passport from Gringotts under his new name. The next day, he'd fly over the sea and far away. Mrs Dray had promised to buy the plane tickets.

He'd got the excellent results on the O.W.L.s — well, the practical parts anyway; he'd have to find out about the written ones later. In a month, he'd be gone from these cursed islands; in a month, he'd be able to kiss his lovely Diana whenever he wished to. In a month, he'd be free to call her his and punch or curse anyone who had a problem with it. He repeated that as a mantra in his head as he was forced to laugh over how Malfoy cursed her.

* * *

It was a sunny day. The sky was azure blue and the flowers in their backyard bloomed, their scent heavy in the air. Regulus stared at the warm blue of the sky and thought of impossibly blue butterflies and ice blue melting into something warmer whenever Diana smiled, of stolen glances and kisses.

He sighed. He'd see her in ten days. He'd never thought a fortnight could drag on so slowly. Ten days sounded like ten separate eternities. He would have spent the whole day gazing at the azure sky if his mother had not called him downstairs.

He never found out what she wanted because he saw the special issue of the Daily Prophet and all else faded from existence. His face was frozen and in the very back of his mind, he thanked Merlin for that small mercy. His mother's voice was loud and shrill and yet it sounded muffled and he could not make out what she was saying.

His skin was too hot, but he was cold. His joints ached with it and his chest was constricted by it. Diana's body was oddly still on the moving photograph and he might have been able to convince himself it was someone's shoddy work with developing the photo— maybe a failed potion — if not for the headline above. She was dead; her whole family was dead, murdered by the people his family wanted him to join. He hated them all.

He wanted to be sick. He wanted to wake up. He should be listening to what his mother was saying, the rational voice in the back of his mind kept insisting, but he couldn't decide if this was real or not. Besides, he couldn't discern any words.

' _I am in shock_ ,' he realised. ' _I can't afford to be in shock,_ ' followed that and then he was sick all over the floor. He told Mother later that it was from spending too much time at the sun's mercy.

It was surprisingly easy to find out who killed his Diana or, as he often called her, his Deidre. Avery had the gall to boast about it. But that was fine. It made it all the easier for Regulus, just as the utter hatred he carried in his heart for the world that kept spinning, the sun that kept shining, the Muggles that kept living, and the Muggle-borns that kept smiling and laughing even when she was dead made it easier to pretend to be an obedient little soldier and a good son.

It was easy to sneer at Mudbloods when none of them were at her funeral. It was easy to call them all the racist slur when they kept pretending everything was alright. It was easy to pretend that she was nothing but a seductress that had left him behind — since he was bitter enough about losing her — when the Dark Lord rampaged through his mind.

And the ugly mask on his face made it all the easier to blend in with the murderers he so despised. The white and black uniform made it impossible for Avery to see who from his side had betrayed him, who had cast the Incarcerous his way just as the sign to leave sounded.

Regulus thought it only fitting that he had sent him to the eternity of bleakness. An eye for an eye. Avery wouldn't ever be happy again, forever surrounded by Dementors because he had stolen Regulus' light, his happiness and joy.

It was good to know that the bastard had gotten his just dues in the same distant way it was good to know that Sirius was alive. It did not make him feel better. It just meant that he found himself more often thinking of the words from Diana's favourite myth.

' _I saw a face in my dream,' said Déirdre, 'that was of brighter countenance than the king's face or_ Cailcin's _, and it was in it that I saw the three colours that pained me, namely the whiteness of the snow on his skin, the blackness of the raven on his hair, and the redness of the blood upon his countenance.'_

He thought of them and of the ruby blood decorating his own skin as it once did hers. He thought of how memory had the tendency to fade and found himself thinking that he would like to die before he forgot the exact intonation she used while reading that to him. The beautiful frozen fire of her eyes and the blush that made her match Deidre's description as she darted meaningful glances at him.

' _Maybe,'_ he thought ruefully, ' _the vengeance was not as sweet as I hoped because Avery did not order that_ attack, _because if Voldemort was against such attack, there would have been none_.'

And so he steeled himself and did what few dared. He went against Voldemort, striking where he knew it would hurt. He died a hero, but, for the longest time, no one had any idea it was so. Not even his brother knew what a hero Regulus was.


	9. Roud 9: By Her Side

**Round 9 - Gear Up!**

 **Beater 2: Beater's Bat: Write about a bully.**

 **Optional prompts:** **(song) Hall of Fame - The Script, (quote) Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile. (Anne Shirley) ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables**

 **Word count: 1980**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I own neither author rights to the HP series** **.**

 **AN: In this story two half-blood girls (and yes the blood-status is mainly my interpretation, so sue me) attend Muggle school, because their mothers work and they aren't rich like Malfoys and so couldn't leave their kids in the hands of family house-elves or hired tutors.**

 **By Her Side**

* * *

 **Before Hogwarts**

 _You can go the distance_

 _You can run the mile_

 _You can walk straight through hell with a smile_

Cho scowled defiantly into the mirror. She wouldn't cry just because her classmates were being awful to her again. They were stupid magicless fools, anyway. She'd be the one laughing in the end, learning magic while they would still be stuck on English and math plus have human biology. Yeah, they'd be stuck with the boring theory while she'll be brewing potions and care for mandrakes and kneezeles.

"I won't cry," she told the mirror firmly. "I'll just imagine them being stuck in the same monotony across the street while I will sit on the Hogwarts Express or, better yet, play Seeker for the Ravenclaw team."

She imagined the feel of the wind in her hair, the smoothness of the Golden Snitch in her hand, the taste of victory sweet and savoury in her mouth — because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.

She nodded seriously at her reflection. She couldn't wait to go to her parents' Alma Mater. She'd be the popular girl, winning the Quidditch Cup and —

"I'm sorry," came a timid voice from behind her, "but did you say 'Hogwarts Express'?"

"Yes," Cho said, proud that her voice did not waver. She was eight; she could handle this.

"Are you really going to Hogwarts?" asked the girl. That surprised Cho.

"Yes," Cho replied, finally recognising the girl's face. It was the new student that had started in the parallel class.

The girl blinked at Cho and then nodded resolutely. "My name is Marietta, and I'll be going to Hogwarts, too." She offered Cho her hand, adding, "Wanna be friends?"

"I'm Cho," she said, shaking Marietta's hand, "and I'd love to have a friend."

That day, after school, their parting remark was, "We'll take Hogwarts by storm."

* * *

 **II. Before Cedric**

 _You can throw your hands up_

 _You can beat the clock (yeah)_

 _You can move a mountain_

 _You can break rocks_

 _You can be a master_

 _Don't wait for luck_

 _Dedicate yourself and you gon' find yourself_

Cho didn't even know how half of it happened. One year, she was the outcast at a Muggle school, and the next, she was the popular girl in the school of magic. She looked up at the stars and wondered how it came along.

True, she had started Hogwarts with a friend already made and an honest smile on her face, but that couldn't have been all, could it?

Maybe it was that she no longer had to hide her magic. Certainly, making Seeker for her house team had helped, but did that mean once she was out of school, she wouldn't be popular anymore?

Or would her popularity simply end when she adorned her chest with a perfect badge next school year? She shrugged her shoulders. It didn't matter; her true friends would stay with her, and that was more than enough.

* * *

 **III. After Cedric**

 _Be believers_

 _Be leaders_

 _Be astronauts_

 _Be champions_

 _Be truth seekers_

Cho looked at the Daily Prophet and felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Hard. She felt breathless like there was so much pressure against her ribcage that she couldn't breathe properly.

Fleetingly, she wished she had been there.

Mostly, she wanted this to be a nightmare. Alas, her imagination wasn't colourful enough to come with this. Six of her schoolmates were heroes. Six kids, all younger than her, had risked their lives fighting Death Eaters in the very heart of the Ministry of Magic while she slept unaware in her bed.

She glanced at Marietta, but her friend was busy sneering at the picture. Cho felt bile rise in her mouth. Silently, she prayed that her friend would have enough sense not to comment.

Cho thought back to the day she herself had called Luna 'Loony' during a talk with Cedric. She hadn't meant anything by it. Truth be told, she had heard that name so often she hadn't been sure what Lovegood's first name was.

The lecture Cedric had given her had made her realise a few things. First: her fellow ravens haven't stopped with the name-calling. Second: her best friend was a bully — and wasn't that a hard pile to swallow?

Cho shuddered with the memory of the horror she had felt when she witnessed her friend lock Luna in an empty broom closet. The many eves she returned from Quidditch practice to a friend who wouldn't meet her eyes and a petite Ravenclaw looking everywhere for her belongings haunted her almost as much as Cedric's unseeing eyes.

The fifth year wasn't hard just because of OWLs — frankly, that had been the easy part. It was the year she was forced to admit that her best friend was a bully. That had been hard. Almost as bad as realising that she wasn't much better. She was a popular girl, and once she told someone off for calling Luna 'Loony', she had been forced to admit in the privacy of her own mind that her disapproval had the power to change things. She hadn't been a bully, but her inaction was as bad as her friend's outright bullying.

Looking at Luna's name printed on the front page, she wondered if this would change the hierarchy of Ravenclaw house. Not that it mattered to Cho. She had promised herself that even if Marietta wasn't the friend she remembered making, she wouldn't give up on her.

She glanced at Marietta again, but her face was carefully blank, making the word SNEAK stand out even more. Well, Cho had promised herself back when Cedric was still alive that she was going to be a better person. She had defended her friend, even when she herself felt betrayed, and she would do so again, but she would also make sure that Marietta did not slide back into her bullying ways.

She sighed, suddenly feeling world-weary. Could she really watch Marietta that much? Their friendship had been degradating since that wake-up call from Cedric, but Marietta had been there for Cho when she wasn't the popular girl — when she had been the outcast of a Muggle school — and sometimes, it felt like Marietta was the only thing keeping her sane. But now, the easy friendship they had struck in the hell-hole their parents had made them attend was gone.

The girl she had befriended all those years ago had been closer to being bullied than being a bully. That girl knew exactly how much words could hurt — knew the terrible weight of loneliness, of not fitting in. The two of them would have admired Luna and Harry for their strength and courage. She herself had admired Harry and never really noticed Luna until Cedric and the DA happened, but she now held both Harry and Luna high esteem. Marietta, though — that girl had changed so much, and Cho couldn't even tell when and how.

When she had been at her lowest in primary school, her grandma told her: "You are an amazing girl. And if they can't see that, then they are blind or stupid. It's their loss."

Back then, she wanted to rage and say: "Well, maybe they are stupid, but they have friends, and I might just rather be stupid than feel like this." But she never would because her grandma was just trying to help and she knew that if she repeated her words often enough, she might start believing them.

Maybe, Marietta just needed someone to repeat to her often enough that she was better than this. That she was a great person who didn't need to bully others to feel better. Cho squared her shoulders and prepared to yell it to the universe. She wasn't giving up. She had gone through hell with the smile that Marietta had put on her face; now was the time to repay the favour.

 _Yeah, do it for your people_

 _Do it for your pride_

 _How are you ever gonna know if you never even try?_

 _Do it for your country_

 _Do it for your name_

 _'Cause there's gonna be a day..._

* * *

 **IV. After Hogwarts**

 _You can be the hero_

 _You can get the gold_

 _Breaking all the records they thought never could be broke_

Returning to Hogwarts a year after graduation was surreal. All year, Cho had heard terrible rumours about the place that would forever be home away from home in her mind;, rumours that even Marietta and Percy admitted to believing.

She didn't know what to expect, dreaded the state she'd find the students in, yet she went there willing to make the last stand and fight.

Marietta, upon seeing her face, simply asked, " _Where?_ "

And so Cho went to what could be hell with a smile on her face and a friend by her side.

No one raised an inquiring eyebrow when they appeared; they just got the tired smiles of people who were glad to have two more willing wands on their side. Luna briefed them on the situation, and if she held any hard feelings towards either of them, she hadn't let it show.

Cho felt more alive than she had felt in a long time as she stood in the DA's hideout, knowing that, soon, she would be fighting for her right to live. Beside her, Marietta radiated nervous energy, and for the first time in a long while, they were both on the same wavelength.

 _(Be a champion)_

 _You could beat the world_

 _You could beat the war_

 _(Be a champion)_

 _You could talk to God, go banging on his door_

 _(You can be a champion)_

The battle was intense. Cho couldn't really remember it in order. Just a few fleeting moments forever finely etched into her memory over the background of noise and terror filled with _step, block, step, cast, duck_ in endless varieties and the desperate thought of _don't stop_.

And then, the unthinkable pause come. The voice penetrating the castle chilled Cho to bone and froze her in place. She waited for Marietta to snap her from her daze with a tired remark, but none was forthcoming. Cho felt an entirely different type of dread fill her like molten lead. Turning around had never been so hard.

She looked into the lifeless eyes of her best friend. She wanted someone to call April Fools. She wanted to rage. It wasn't fair. She wanted to cry, to blame the bitter fates. She wanted to carve the word oathbreaker into her wrist because hadn't she sworn to herself that she wouldn't lose another one? She wanted to hit Harry because wasn't the DA supposed to prepare them for this?

Instead, she gently closed those unnervingly blank eyes and took the still-warm body into her arms.

 _Standing in the hall of fame_

 _(yeah, yeah, yeah)_

 _And the world's gonna know your name_

 _(yeah, yeah, yeah)_

 _'Cause you burn with the brightest flame_

 _(yeah, yeah, yeah)_

 _And the world's gonna know your name_

 _(yeah, yeah, yeah)_

 _And you'll be on the walls of the hall of fame_

After the war, Cho found a time when no one else was around to visit the memorial. Her hand gently traced Marietta's name. A small smile curved under her tears as she thought of two little girls in London, dreaming of the school of magic, of being popular — famous, even.

"When I said that the world was gonna know your name, I never meant like this, Marrie."

Again, Cho traced the name etched in the wall before her "We were supposed to stand together and take the world by the storm, remember?"

She looked at the cold marble and wondered which one of them was the real bully in this sorry tale.


	10. Round 10: The Hidden Knife

**Round 10 - Music Through the Decades**

BEATER 2: 1950's: Mack the Knife — Bobby Darin

 **Optional prompts:** (word) blend, (emotion) fear

 **Word count: 1607**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the HP series nor Bobby Darin's song.**

 **A/N: Listen to the song while reading or before or read the lyrics. Especially, if you don't know it.**

 **The Hidden Knife**

Sometimes, Augusta wondered if one's life could be built around a song; sometimes, she felt like her life was traversing the decorative lines of a mandala and that the middle of her mandala was the Mack the Knife song.

Augusta remembered exactly when she had first heard the song. How could she ever forget? She remembered perfectly every single new rendition of it she had ever heard.

All of them marked a defining moment of her life. Up till now.

She looked at her grandson's chubby face, so peaceful in his sleep, and quietly sung like her mother did that first time.

 _Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne_

 _Und die trägt er im Gesicht_

 _Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer_

 _Doch das Messer sieht man nicht._

But the German words were all wrong in her mouth. It was that wrongness that brought her back. Augusta blinked at the baby in her arms and softly called for Libby. Libby, thankfully, took the baby away without questions and reappeared moments later with a hot kettle of tea and a bottle of good whisky.

* * *

Narcissa smiled at Lucius; the man was so cute, like a child playing dress-up. There was — honest to Merlin — a hidden blade in his walking stick and his hands were clad in snow-white gloves. Narcissa let him twirl her around, laughing in delight.

Her Lucius, who always reminded her of the song her mother so adored. She would have the recording with Bobby Daring's version playing every other night, but when Narcissa wouldn't go to sleep, she'd tell her of the time she had heard the other, more delightfully ambiguous version.

Her father would sigh every time he heard Mother had it playing again, whispering to her theatrically that Fitzgerald's version was better.

When her mother stopped recognising her, she'd scouted every version of the song she could find as a side project. The translation charm stole away certain enchanting qualities of the song, but she found herself agreeing with her mother. Neither of the English versions was as good as those with the word Messer in their name. But Darin's voice was like balm to her soul; it always put her mind and heart at ease.

 _Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear_

 _And it shows them pearly white_

 _Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe_

 _And he keeps it, ah, out of sight_

 _Ya know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe_

 _Scarlet billows start to spread_

 _Fancy gloves, oh, wears old MacHeath, babe_

 _So there's never, never a trace of red_

So she laughed, dancing to the song, and for a moment, she forgot all her worries as she lost herself in that wonderful voice and the feeling of her husband's strong arms.

 _ *****_ _*****_ _*****_ _*****_ _*** time skip ***_ _*****_ _*****_ _*****_ _*****_

The night before Lucius' trial, Narcissa sat in her baby's room after her little darling woke her up, reminiscing. When she was little, she hadn't understood what her mother meant when she said that the shark was fearsome, too. _So what_ , she had thought, _if it had impressive teeth? It showed off its strengths without thought and left itself wide open, whereas Mickie McHeat could be the most powerful wizard alive and all anyone had come to suspect was a hidden knife._ When she was older, she thought Lucius could make a wonderful McHeat for her. She had learned then what mother meant about the shark; Voldemort was a shark. A brutal player sewing fear in the hearts of men, he had too much power to be ignored but lacked any finesse. His lack of style hardly mattered — she learned — when fear made everyone hold their tongue.

But now, the shark was gone, and her husband was no McHeat. He lost that by allying himself with that monster. Oh, he looked so cute trying so hard to pretend he could still be that man, but the secrecy, the mask of upstanding, law-obedient citizenship — those were McHeat's strengths. Lucius, if he was lucky, would be forevermore kept under watchful eye, forever doubted. In the best case scenario, his mask was cracked. If he wasn't lucky — Narcissa swallowed. No, it would not come to that. Lucius had taken that mark to protect her.

Nothing seemed quite as harmless as housewife, did it?

* * *

Augusta sat with a tumble of whisky in her hand. The war was over. Or so they said. They started saying it before — Augusta gulped down the whisky — before those monsters tore apart her family. It was just her and her grandson now. And she couldn't bring herself to trust the healers who said that Neville was alright while her son — . How could Neville possibly be alright when his parents...?

Augusta shook her head. The war was not over. The shark was dead, but his army of merry murderers was still mostly at large. She was terrified; how could she not be?

Her little one was so talented. He had gone through such rigorous training, and yet — and yet he suffered a fate worse than death. Those bastards that did it were behind bars, but how many other previously masked men were out there, poisoning their world even as the majority still celebrated its liberation?

Augusta took another gulp of whisky. Today, she'd grieve; tomorrow, she'd see. Ultimately, she'd have to be strong for her grandson, even if she'd seem like a tough but harmless old lady to the rest of world. It wouldn't take much; just wearing the hat that had gone out of fashion the year after her husband died and continuing to wear the robes that were now almost outdated should be enough.

* * *

The years went on. Her darling little angel tried emulating his daddy and Narcissa despised it. It wasn't Slytherin of him. Lucius ignored the cracks in his own mask. It was cute at first, but now, it just kept making her own work so much harder.

She just wanted to keep her family safe. She should have realised sooner that she should be protecting them from themselves too.

Alas, she just could not wrap her head around it. Why had he tried to bring that man back? Was it fear? Narcissa remembered fear. That gut-wrenching dread that made your muscles lock in place and your breathing way too shallow. She remembered it as well as those cold, hard ruby eyes.

But why then try to bring the dragon that could imprison you with their gaze alone back? Some preemptive measure, perhaps?

Narcissa sipped her favourite blend of tea as she listened to her son's chatter and Lucius' less than successful attempts to get the boy to censor himself. In the end, it did not matter why Lucius had tried to bring that monster back. The important information was that He wasn't truly gone. That there were still people willing to bring him back.

Inwardly, Narcissa sighed as she wondered how to get Severus to give her more Occlumency lessons without alerting the man to anything.

* * *

Augusta took a dainty sip of her tea as she listened to her grandson stuttering through the disturbing tale of what had really happened at the school this year. She had been horrified with herself when she realised that Neville had started believing the lies she spread about him, but now, she was thankful for it. Neville was a strong heir to the house of Longbottom and the fact that everyone — himself included — underestimated him even more than they did her would prove useful one of these days. It might even save his life.

She prayed she was wrong, but she wasn't naive enough to take that chance. It sounded like the shark wasn't truly gone. And even if he was, those who wore the gaudy masks roamed free with their deadly hidden knives. It was best they thought her grandson harmless. Such a mistake could make the difference between life and death.

After breakfast, she allowed him to go to the greenhouses. It gave her the time to disappear for a bit of training before lunch. Training had just moved up on her list of priorities.

* * *

Narcissa Malfoy was many things, but stupid wasn't among them. She had read the signs long before the glaringly obvious one that happened at the Quidditch World Cup was even conceivable. However, she was not just watching signs, but those who observed those signs, too.

That was why she told Draco to lay off Longbottom before she told him to lay low.

That was why she made Severus swear that vow.

That was why she compiled her own list of the dead because an old acquaintance was back in town.

* * *

Augusta sat at her seat in the Wizengamot, listening to Narcissa's tale and reading between lines.

Reluctantly, she had to admit that the woman impressed her. Narcissa wasn't just as sly as Mackie McHeat; she was also as bold as the singer that sung about the ruler of the underworld and all the crimes that could not be traced back to him.

She had lied to the Dark Lord. She had made everyone underestimated her as she played the deadly game of cloak and dagger to keep her family safe. And when she won that, she turned and bared herself, throwing away her mask, saying, "I am here" and daring them to shoot.

Augusta knew the pragmatic thing would be to get rid of such a threat, but her own mask had been blown away by the war. Neville was strong enough to protect himself now and so she permitted herself to admire the woman instead.

 **A/N: Fun fact, in Czech version Mackie's knife isn't out of sight but hidden in the walking stick.**


	11. Round 11: Kintsugi

**Round 11 - Seasons Greetings**

 **BEATER 2: Write about growing old on a winter day(s) OR youthfulness on a spring night(s).**

 **Optional prompts:** (dialogue) "You can't start a new chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.", (song) This is Why I Need You - Jesse Ruben

 **WARNING: This fic is one big spoiler for** _ **Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them**_ **! Really, you won't get it if you haven't seen it.**

 **Word count: 2774**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the HP series nor** _ **Fantastic Beasts**_ **movie. I'm also not Jesse Ruben so that's no rights to** _ **This is Why I need you**_ **for me** _ **.**_

 **Kintsugi**

 _ **I. He**_

 _I have so many questions and places to go_

 _There are too many options, far too many unknowns_

 _This is why I need you_

 _And everyone talks now, but no one is right_

 _There are too many armies, with no one to fight_

 _This is why I need you_

Sometimes, he felt too old. Some days, he wondered if the canning factory had in fact managed to sap his soul from his body. A slow, constant drain of all that made him who he was, matching the ruthless march of Newtonian time. Certainly, every passing second there felt like a second closer to death or, worse, soullessness.

And even here and now — so removed from that hell on Earth, living his dream — he often found himself wondering whether his soul wasn't already lost because something was. Something important was missing. He could see it in the shapes of his pastries, in the sad blue eyes of that pretty blonde woman that occasionally dropped by his bakery, on the ice in the park that tickled in his brain like a memory that one knew was there but that just wouldn't resurface.

Only, as far as he was aware, there was no such memory.

He was sure that the beautiful, sorrowful woman that dropped by his bakery every now and then was a key. She, the shapes of his pastries, and the impossible dreams were like puzzle pieces that wouldn't quite fit into his life anymore. Even though he knew that they belonged there.

He couldn't even contemplate a world in which they didn't fit, and yet — yet the puzzles of his life were missing too many pieces for those three to fit in.

But when she watched him from across the bakery, he could almost make them fit anyway. She made the impossibility of these dreams seem less impossible. She asked him for two nifflers and he handed her — judging by her unwavering smile — the right pastries without thinking about it. The shape was unmistakable, after all. It wasn't till the bell stopped its _ding-o-ding_ after her exit that he realised that the likeness — while remarkable — was to a creature from his dreams.

And for a moment, he wondered: _what if_?

Ironically, it wasn't her that made the pieces click together. It was a glimpse of a pale blue coat and coppery curls. He stood at the street looking after it, wondering, ' _What if my dreams are actually memories?_ ' It wasn't until Newt came by his bakery that he knew.

He was also suddenly very sure that knowing wasn't safe. But he smiled and Newt's name slipped from his lips anyway — because while he didn't remember and might not understand, he knew that Newt was his friend and a good man.

That night, he dreamed of the faces whose bravery was so thin that it was see-through, and the hardest step he ever took. He has never considered rain to be menacing, but right now — waking from that — he would prefer the howling of damned souls or swoosh of falling bombs to the usually so soothing pitter-patter of falling rain.

He hastily threw some clothes on and went outside. The rain was cold and wet, and it plastered his clothes to his skin, but it didn't hurt and it didn't alter his mind or memory as he wandered the streets. Soon, it ended and he found himself left standing in the wet street before a strangely familiar building.

He looked up at the rows of darkened windows. This had to be where Queenie lived with her sister; he could vaguely recall being in their home. He couldn't remember why he stayed there, just the sense of wonder and safety he felt once upon a dream.

He shook his head ruefully. He understood now why Queenie kept giving him those sad looks. He was still missing so many 'why's and 'how's, but as he turned to trudge home, he knew that he loved her, he trusted Newt, and he never wanted to forget them. But he had walked into that damned rain knowing he would forget them anyway because it was safer for all of them, because it was less heartbreaking that way.

He shivered as his legs dragged him home. What could be more heartbreaking than forgetting? Than meeting your heart, knowing they didn't even remember you? Looking at the man that used to look at you with love, only for him to not even recognise you?

The questions rang through his head without any answers in sight. He suddenly felt too old for this — this madness that had him wandering through the cold, empty streets in the dead of night. He shivered in his wet clothes.

Once upon a dream, he had the love of a beautiful witch whom he gave his heart, then he was made to forget. Now, he remembered.

Now, he mused, _Does she love me still? How will she react once she sees that I remember?_

* * *

 **II.** **She**

 _'Cause you make the darkness less dark_

 _You make the edges less sharp_

 _You make the winter feel warmer_

 _And you make my weakness less weak_

 _You make the bottom less deep_

 _You make the waiting feel shorter_

 _You make my crazy feel normal, every time_

 _You are the who, love is the what, and this is the why_

Tina felt as though she had aged by decades during the winter that just passed. The mess with Newt's creatures running rampant, being sentenced to death, finding her boss was impersonated by Grindelwald for Mercy Lewis only knew how long, seeing her fellow Aurors kill a child they all failed so terribly — that would certainly be enough to age anyone beyond their years.

Yet, it was other things that made her feel way too old to face the day — the way the sound of rain always made her remember Jacob walking away or how she often found herself turn to say something to Newt, only for him to not be there.

The whole thing made her head hurt. How could she miss him so much? When did she start to banter with him rather than snapping at him? And how could she be so selfish as to bemoan him sailing away when he promised to return? When she was waiting for Queenie, who had to be a hidden masochist to keep sneaking off to Jacob's bakery like this?

Tina sighed. Most of all, she felt like it was Queenie's heartbreak that made her grow old on the seemingly endless winter nights. How many times had she watched from afar as her sister's heart broke over and over again as she once again snuck out to see him? How many times had she listened to her proud little sister cry herself to sleep, utterly powerless to help?

When she was left to fend for both of them, it had been Queenie's light that kept her going. It, like the light of full moon, was strong enough to lighten her way, to make her see where her steps were taking them, and yet so gentle it could never hurt her eyes.

When she was at her weakest, it was Queenie that kept her from shattering, but now, she could only watch as she died bit by bit inside. Tina was powerless to ease her suffering; even with all her training, her magic was reduced to impotent thumping in her veins in face of this terrible injustice.

But she felt hope bloom in her heart as she read the letter that had come on the first spring night. The long winter was over and things were finally looking up for Newt was coming. And with Newt there, she had no doubt that she would find a way to do more than stand and watch.

She smiled — a thin, bitter quirk of her mouth. She could practically see it — Newt once again running into her life, dragging her to rock bottom so their feet had enough purchase to jump and soar. Somehow, he would pick up the broken pieces and make them into something beautiful. Because when he wasn't excitedly bouncing around exploring, that was what he did.

That night, she fell asleep feeling like a child that had just been reassured by their mother or father that everything would be alright.

* * *

 **III.** **He**

 _There are so many problems and no one who cares_

 _There are so many roads, and they all need repairs_

 _This is why I need you_

 _And there's not enough chocolate, there's too many chores_

 _There are so many mountains that I haven't explored_

 _This is why I need you_

Newt stepped from the ship onto the land with purpose. Customs had never seemed so slow before. It was an eternity of waiting in the line for a Mugg — Nomaj to take a quick look at his battered suitcase and his papers and wave him through.

Even the brisk glance over his papers felt too long when Newt knew she was waiting for him. Once he was outside, he found himself running towards the bank where he first met her. She hadn't gotten a day off, but she had promised to meet him there.

It was kind of funny how he had spent the whole way agonising about how terrible the meeting was going to turn out to be, and now, he could only think of their parting in the harbour. For once, he wasn't wondering how Queenie was holding up or what Jacob was doing. No, for the first time in weeks, he wasn't cursing Rappaport's Law, Grindelwald or American Aurors.

Now, he was rushing through the busy New York streets with Theseus' advice that he had already failed to follow once ringing in his ears. He had already failed to follow it once; he was not planning on doing so again

" _You can't start a new chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one."_

He was going to start the new chapter of his life by kissing Tina like he should have

done once upon a December.

And if there was perfectly true documentation naming a certain Jacob Kowalski a Squib in his suitcase, well, he certainly had no plans to point out that the man whom it referred to was actually one of the many victims of World War I and of no relation to a certain baker. Just like he wasn't in any hurry to mention to Tina the trip for four to Niagara Falls that he had started to plan during the seemingly unending journey to America.

After all, it would be preposterous to think Jacob would remember just because he didn't consider all those magical memories to be bad. It would be scandalous to think Queenie might like a spring wedding in Canada to someone she had only met last December.

Most of all, though, it wouldn't do to get anyone's hopes up.

And then he stopped thinking and possibly breathing because he saw her. She stood on the same spot as when he first met her and he had never seen anything so beautiful. And then she was in his arms like it was the most natural place for her to be and he shyly and hesitantly angled his head and met her lips with his own.

Intellectually, he knew the world was as messed up as it was moments before, but here and now, he couldn't care less. Because with her in his arms, the problems of the world felt less like a train hurtling towards a rocky mountainside and more like spring rain. A spring rain that just passes you by and leaves the grass smelling so deliciously fresh and the whole world seemingly younger and cleaner in its wake.

* * *

 **IV. She**

 _You keep the ship moving forward_

 _And you make it easy to try_

 _You make my crazy feel normal, every time_

 _You are the who, love is the what, and this is the why_

 _You are the who, love is the what, and this is the why_

 _You are the who, love is the what, and this is the why_

Queenie sat by the window, her head pressed against the cool glass as she wept with the sky. What could she do but weep? It had been months, and she still felt like a shard of a greater whole — all sharp edges that did not belong anywhere anymore.

When Newt and Jacob came into their life, Queenie had had no idea how much they would change it. She had always been a bit of loner, partly because most people could not put up with her Legilimency. Her sister had taught her that the people who could not take her as she was were not worth the effort of changing anyway. Not that Queenie could change her nature; she had tried once after Teenie graduated and she was left alone at Ilvermorny. Surrounded by people who envied and pitied her or, worse, feared her, she had come to peace with staying lonely for the rest of her life.

Well, not really, because even then, she knew that Tina, while physically away, was still there for her. She could always depend on her big sister.

But now Tina was as lost and broken as Queenie herself was: two pieces that no longer quite fit together. She found herself seeking out Jacob, only to shatter anew each time he did not even recognise her.

The four of them together had been … incredible. They were thrown together by a whirlwind of events that she could have never even imagined happening, and they had become something more than themselves under the weight of history-changing events. They had broken so many laws it wasn't even funny, and yet instead of MACUSA executing them, they were hailed as heroes. Tina was even reinstaginated as an Auror!

And yet, Queenie found that the most incredible thing about it was Jacob. The Nomaj that was not freaked out by a witch with mind-reading capabilities. Hell, even Tina grew annoyed from time to time with Queenie's constant disregard for privacy, and yet Jacob… Queenie sighed. Jacob and Newt had both been something else.

They had shown her and Tina what it was like to belong, to not be alone, and now the life they had lived before them seemed so empty and meaningless. And now Newt was returning. She tried to be happy for Tina, she really did, but it felt like walking to Kowalski Bakery that first time, only to see not even a shadow of recognition in those beloved eyes.

She was therefore utterly unprepared for Jacob recognising her on the day Newt was scheduled to arrive. But even though she had not told him her name since the rain, he asked her: "Queenie, do you want two niffler pastries as usual?"

So she stood there frozen, not daring to breathe or move. Terrified this was a dream.

"Queenie?" he asked, softly, his voice full of worry.

"Jacob?"

"Yes?"

"What changed?"

"I… I couldn't have dreamed him up."

Giggling, Queenie replied: "No, he is too incredible for that, isn't he?" She watched as the most brilliant smile she had ever seen stretched over Jacob's lips.

"He is."

"So, he was there?"

"Yes, I might have sneaked two prototypes to his order of Tina's favourite and a niffler."

"Prototypes?"

"I'm starting on occamies."

"Mhm, we need a lot of pastries for tonight's celebration, then. I hope you'll be there?"

"I wouldn't miss it for all the riches in the world," he told her, handing her a full cake box of pastries.

"I'll hold you to that," she replied. Then, she leaned in and pecked his cheek before walking away. She had a dinner to prepare.

That night, she served her family a dinner more elaborate than anything that she had cooked in a while. She could have sworn that with every minute spent talking and laughing in the brightly lit apartment while the night grew darker and darker still before eventually starting to brighten again, she grew younger. They all did.

She could watch the years falling from them all. The world was still a messed up place, and in the morning, they would all have to worry about Rappaport's Law and whatever Newt had snuggled in his case this time, but here and now, everything was perfect.

Here and now, she knew it wouldn't be easy — nothing worthwhile was — but she wouldn't ever let this go again.


	12. Round 12: Void

**Round 12 - Pair them up!**

 **BEATER 2: You'll be writing about two characters in an enemies relationship.**

 **Character used: Bellatrix Lestrange and Neville Longbottom**

 **Optional prompts:** **(quote) In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain. – Aberjhani; (dialogue) "I've forgotten what it's like to feel young."; (word) fix**

 **Word count: 2377**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the HP series.**

 **Void**

She snarled in wordless rage as she held the Crucio in place. She watched the faithless bitch writhe on the ground. The rage was powered by her frustration. At this rate, these blasted aurors would sooner lose their minds than tell her. It would be admirable if it wasn't so inconvenient. And to top it off, that blasted child wasn't even there.

She did not know why the Potter and Longbottom heirs were such high-priority targets but it would feel satisfying to at least get them. Even, if it did not loosen the knot that formed in her stomach when she could not contact her Lord.

* * *

He looked at the big doll. It looked like his mommy but it wasn't her. His mommy always smiled at him, picked him up, cuddled him and talked to him whereas the doll's eyes were blank and unseeing. There was a doll of his daddy too. Or was it a puppet? Neville wasn't sure what the difference between doll and puppet were but he thought both were as lifeless as these _things_ staring at the wall behind him.

He would have hated his grandma for taking him here to this cruel parody of the family he missed if she wasn't so visibly distressed by it. His grandmother looked wretched though so he hugged her.

It wasn't till they were leaving that he started to doubt. Because the doll smiled at him — a painfully familiar curve of lips that always meant everything would be alright and it leaned down and handed him a candy-wrapper. It was pretty — bright coloured and shiny like metal and it still smelled like chocolate. Neville shivered. The doll gave it to him, handing it over like some great treasure, carefully timing it's move to when his grandma's back was turned as though it was afraid she would get jealous. He clutched the foil in his hand and said " _thank you",_ cause his mommy would want him to be polite.

The world tasted like bile on his tongue. His eyes stung. He hid in his grandma's robes. The old witch didn't comment on his tears, just held him close.

He didn't understand. But he knew something horrible was going on. His grandma should be admonishing him that men and big boys don't cry while gently rubbing his back, not clutch him like she was afraid he would disappear. He heard her breathing hitch and it just made him tighten his hold on her and cry harder.

On his next visit to that awful room, Neville understood that these things were really his parents. He was still confused about the why and how. He couldn't comprehend how something with eyes that blank could possibly be alive.

* * *

In a dreary grey cell, on a grey rock that called itself an island in a prison guarded by dark hovering figures that would fit in even the gloomiest of nightmares a witch laughed. It was terrible sound. Chilling and sinister, fitting for that little hell surrounded by crashing cold water. It was so full of promise one would expect it to carry on for miles and miles but it was swallowed by the roar of the angry sea along the cries of despair from the occupants of other cells.

As if Azkaban denied escape even to the cries of the condemned.

The aurors unlucky enough to be there through hushedly warned these from following ships of it though. The mad manic laughter of Bellatrix Lestrange was almost as legendary as that of her cousin. Her threats were carefully noted too. Not that anyone's opinion of her could sink anymore just because she made threats against the son of aurors she had tortured to insanity.

Generally, though whatever she said was dismissed as mad ravings because of her insistence that her Lord will return.

* * *

But then he did not understand why anyone would turn a mouse into a cup, yet witches did it. Maybe that was it. Maybe some evil witch or dark wizard tried to make them into her or his puppets. He wondered if it meant the healers will figure out what was wrong and return them to normal. Maybe they had such problems with it because whoever did that to his parents didn't quite manage to turn them into puppets?

* * *

Gradually she stopped yelling and promising doom. Well, not entirely. But she was silent when no one new was there. The days blurred in the grey timelessness that felt like an eternity but her faith did not waver. There was no point in preaching it though. People were either convinced or wouldn't listen. So she kept her silence and drew on the Occlumency lesson of her childhood. These traitors had sent her here to punish her for her loyalty and she endured it with pride, unlike the spineless cowards that tried with various level of success plead innocence or beg for mercy.

She was Black, after all. She would never beg. She might bow if she felt like it but she would never break.

So she used the sound of waves to help clear her mind and dragged out the memory of a family holiday in France. She wasn't locking herself in her mind like many had, just keeping her sanity intact so when the time comes she could offer her services to her Lord, once again.

* * *

He doesn't remember the exact day it happened on. Actually, that's a lie. He remembers the date, the weather the bloody day of the week it was. It's the year, the age that eludes him. He was too young, though.

When asked, he would say his childhood ended when he was eight and first heard the whole sordid tale of how his parents ended in the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo and got a name and face to go along with his hatred. The lie would slip from his lips with ease and without so much as a hint of remorse. Despite that, he would come to suspect that none that matters trust it.

His childhood ended sooner. It was on an unremarkable day - a dreary autumn day like many others with its overcast sky, chilly winds that somehow blew right through any warm clothing and a constant barely there drizzle. It was a day before Samhain and his Grandmother took him to the hospital for some inoculations. And since they were already here, they went for a visit to that terrible white room in that hopeless place that got the title of hell on Earth stripped from itself by Azkaban but wasn't really any better. Actually, Neville thought grimly, that place was worse. It didn't need dementors to strip its visitor of hope and it sent chills down their backs without any input from the merciless elements.

It was pretty unremarkable day except it was the day, he understood that the empty shells before him were his parents and there was no way to fix them.

* * *

He was eleven and staring at the ceiling of Gryffindor Common Room., unable to do anything to help or even comprehend what was wrong. He couldn't even ball his hands into fists or scream out his rage or pace to try and alleviate his frustration.

He was past feeling like he might burst. It no longer felt like his blood was boiling. Cursing the witch that left him there stunned and useless had long since lost its appeal. The darkening ceiling and dancing shadow were the only semi-objective ways he had to measure time. As far as he could tell too much time had passed already. A lump formed in his throat as it occurred to him that his baby self must have felt equally helpless when his mum hid him in a closet and silenced it. He might have been unable to hear the screams and he surely wailed then but babies could sense when something was wrong. Back then he had been hidden away to be kept safe, now he was left cursed on the floor for the same reason. At least, it hadn't been humiliating when he was a baby.

He greatly thought he might start hating Hermione as much as he did Lestrange if this turned to have as irreversible effects. These were his friend that had rushed to danger, damn it. And he was eleven, not two, he could be helping them, should be helping them not just lying here like a _Merlin-damned_ lump.

* * *

When the monotony of timeless despair was disrupted by a visit, she would drag herself to full awareness and throw around threats, promises, and insults in an equal already legendary measure.

But more importantly, she would observe. The officials always looked like they would rather be anywhere else but one could still try to pick on subtler clues indicating a long-term stress that could indicate her Lord's return. It also gave her chance to measure time by age marred the faces of Aurors and the face of Minister of Magic changed with an election.

She assessed the changes with clinical cool, never letting them affect her faith but willing to fantasize of new enemies for her to defeat living out there, maturing to become more of a challenge for her rather than helpless pray they were when she was still free.

* * *

Out of all the people Neville knew, he thought Harry got him the most because Harry was very similar in many important ways that made them both stick out. Harry was the only one who got that Neville was not a kid, that he stopped being a child long before he laid his eyes on Hogwarts for the first time.

Harry was the only one who took Draco the same way. Merlin, it was actually pretty funny how Malfoy thought they hated him, that he was their enemy. That snake had no idea. Oh, they would say they hated him, they would get riled by the things he said but it wasn't hatred. He was more of an insistently buzzing annoying fly than an enemy.

All the reasons that made Harry understand Neville made Neville get Harry. So when Harry said that Voldemort was back, he knew it was so. And when people tried to tell him he was wrong to believe that and how impossible it was to rise dead back to the life, he paid them just enough attention to determine whatever he could possibly open their eyes. And if his eyes strayed to the North when he stewed in his thoughts, and if he wondered when Voldemort would free his followers, and if he tried to see how to use the things he learnt to kill a certain witch, then, well, no one needed to know that.

Just like no one needed to know that when Harry categorised the spell to teach the DA, the useful enough to teach category translated into: _'it should keep you alive'_. After all, only children did not understand that.

* * *

Bellatrix smiled as she tasted the sweet air of freedom and bowed deeply to her Lord. By her reckoning, the Longbottom heir should be old enough to pass for a bit more than a helpless prey. That was good, it made the impending hunt more appealing.

* * *

The first time he entered a real fight, he spent more time running than anything else. He lost his wand, he saw his friends get hurt. He watched the advancing figures in white masks and fought with his all. When it was over, he sat by his friend's bedsides and thought: ' _we are only alive because they only saw us as harmless kids. Merlin, they saw us as kids and tried to kill us anyway._ '

They all were his enemies, Neville decided. All these that would fight for that man alongside Her were his enemies, even if she was his Nemesis as surely as Voldemort was Harry's.

* * *

Bellatrix took her punishment for failing with dignity, scowling at the fools that dared to plead for mercy after falling their Lord so spectacularly.

Yes, the mission was a failure but Bellatrix had enjoyed herself. She had managed to cleanse some of the taints that strained her family name, get to taunt Potter about it but more importantly, she managed to assess ickle Longbottom. _And by Morgana_ , that alone would have been worthy of the punishment. All her informants had been wrong, the boy was no squib and if he was given half a chance he would grow into a worthy enemy. Bellatrix wanted to see him on the battlefield again, wanted to duel him. He was hers.

* * *

Neville stared at the corpse. Bellatrix's signature deranged grin was frozen at her still lips, her eyes were blank and unseeing, her hair as matted as ever. He carefully closed her eyes. So this was it. The enemy that haunted his steps since before he could talk was dead. She got killed for attacking a kid, never mind that Ginny wasn't a child anymore. She always will be a baby in her mother's eyes.

Bellatrix Lestrange was dead. Neville had imagined killing her, had thought the world would be a better place if she was dead. He didn't know about the world but he just felt tired. People were crying everywhere. There was so many dead. The blood was still gushing from the many wounded. He had once read somewhere that: " _In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain,_ " and he wondered if this time in the aftermath of the great end-game the adults would bother to clean the house enough for the blood to stop gushing. Or if they would make sure that the door to similar disaster as this one, were firmly shut.

That was when he realised that he was an adult now. A war-hero if the whispers that followed him around were anything to go by. Well, then it seemed like he would just have to do it himself.

And when he later heard people disregard what he and Harry and the DA said because they were so young, he laughed mirthlessly: " _I've forgotten what it's like to feel young,_ " he said when the inquiring looks were leveled at him., " _unless it feels like believing that a revenge would change things. It really doesn't change a damn thing._ "


	13. Round 13: Brothers

**Round 13 - Chess**

 **BEATER 2: Pawn 2: Write about a character forced to fight for their family**

 **Optional prompts:** **(colour) steel grey; (dialogue) "What makes you so sure it was me?"; (word) freedom**

 **Word count: 1 420**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the HP series.**

 **A/N If this story had a soundtrack it would be** _**No Light, No Ligh**_ **t by Florence + The Machine and** _ **Brothers**_ **by Vic Mignogna.**

 **Brothers**

 _No light, no light in your bright blue eyes_

 _I never knew daylight could be so violent_

 _A revelation in the light of day_

 _You can't choose what stays and what fades away_

 _ **_Florence + The Machine**_

* * *

I clench my fists and kick goat shit from the track between the fences, straight at Widow Gardner's prized petunias. Then I stomp off from the village, muttering angrily.

" _ **Damn them all! Damn Albus**_ _for forcing me to return to school come September when Ariana needs me._ _ **Damn all**_ _these harmless little old ladies with_ _ **their empty platitudes.**_ _**They have no idea**_ _how I feel."_

I have not only lost a mother. Albus does not understand that Ariana won't eat just because he asked her nicely and yelling will only make it worse. She already lost so much weight by the time last school year ended.

" _ **Damn Albus with his self-righteous attitude.**_ _If he wants to leave so badly_ , _why doesn't he?_ "

He could tour the world like he wants and I could take care of Ariana and the goats as I want. It would be an ideal solution. But no, _Mr Responsible_ has to go on about _the good of education_ and how I have to finish mine. Like the idiot believes Hogwarts teaches me anything. Albus always teases me that I can't even read, but to take from it that I am not and never will be interested in academia? _No, Sirs. No._ That is pretty _stupid for a genius_.

Sometimes, I wonder if Albus even realises how all his bitching about having to stay makes it look like he only did it because the alternative would look bad. _Merlin,_ the only reason I do not think so is that Al really wanted to go and knows better than to care too deeply about what others think of him.

We both learned that lesson the hard way. After our father was arrested, everyone balked at the name Dumbledore. Later, it was reinforced when the rumours started — how Ariana is a Squib and that is why we keep her hidden.

I did not want to fight for this family, not when I saw where it got our father. That did not do any good, but I have since learned that there are other ways of fighting — like getting a smile out of my usually catatonic sister, which is why this frustrates me so much.

Nobody takes me seriously. I could reluctantly understand why I had to return for the last two months of the school year after Mum's funeral, but why can't I study from home and possibly take the OWLs with others?

How can I possibly go to school when it likely will kill my sister because Albus just can't handle her? He could be learning that, but he doesn't really care about anything but _Gellert_. If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny how solidly that blond douche has him wrapped around his little finger.

After Dad was arrested, Al tried to pretend he didn't care. He tried so hard to make a name for himself so he could leave the sordid family history — and us with it — behind. And now, when he almost succeeded with his plans only to be delayed by our mother's untimely death, he suddenly wants to tear down the system that screwed us over and show the Muggles what he really thinks of them.

" _Pche! That idiot!_ "

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad that he lets himself be manipulated like that. Al was never supposed to be a pawn. I kick a stone out of my way angrily. It is almost painful to watch how he fawns over _Gellert_.

It hurts that he doesn't trust me.

* * *

Sometimes, I really hate being proven right. Especially if it involves being subjected to the Cruciatus Curse. Al's eyes went through millions of emotions from the moment I pointed out that the obligation Al took on himself would strip him of his ability to lead the rebellion as surely as they took away his freedom to take the grand world tour to now, when my legs give out on me under the strain of the curse. But I can't afford to dwell on that. I never knew not screaming and not thrashing wildly could take so much.

And then the curse is gone, but I still need to regain my breath as I frantically pat the ground looking for my wand.

Wand in hand, I stand up. Al, it would seem, is using every trick he knows, and yet, he isn't winning. Well, not every, I think dryly as I notice that blond bastard aim a Cruciatus at my brother. I cast Impedimenta because it is the first spell to come to mind and then everything is a horrid blur of spellfire and screams. There is no time to think. Gellert doesn't hold back at all.

An eerily green light surges through the havoc.

 **THUMP!**

The world stops. The sounds echo in my ears. The sound of a body hitting the ground. Bile rises in my throat as my brain catches up with my senses.

I can see the blond son of a bitch standing unharmed and, with a quick glance to the right, I can see my brother. He looks worse for wear than the blond but healthy. I follow his downturned gaze to —

No! No, that can't be right; she was safely at home. She couldn't have been here! What was she doing here?

 _Oh, Merlin._ _**No!**_

* * *

The funeral is a sombre affair. Everyone is dressed in fancy black dress robes. The sky is steel grey. It looks monolithic and despairing. How sad, considering the many steel grey things Ariana loved — from Mother's eyes and stormy seas to the smoke of the Hogwarts Express. I don't speak on it. What would I say? I've never been all that good with words; that has always been Albus' prerogative.

But even Albus trips over his words as he tries to deliver the eulogy. His eyes look somewhere into the distance, his rigid pose not allowing him to keep them to the ground as he has been doing ever since that day.

It isn't until he steps away from the designed speaker's spot that he meets my eyes for the first time since before Ariana died.

His usually expressive blue eyes are dead, but they still seem to ask: " _What makes you so sure it was me?_ "

No. I do a double take, almost taking a step back. They do not seem like they are asking. Albus' mental walls have been torn apart by the turmoil and he _is_ asking.

I march right to him and punch him. The cracking of a nose breaking is an oddly satisfying noise.

How dare he? I have never said anything to indicate that I hold him responsible! Doesn't the idiot realise that he never even used a Killing Curse? Maybe I can pound some sense into him since he doesn't listen when I do speak.

 _That idiot! Is that why he has been avoiding me? Does he really think I would go on crowing, 'I told you so,' after what happened? So he acted like a love-sick puppy the whole summer, but by Merlin…_

Ariana was killed by that blond bastard who did only one right thing in his whole miserable life — disappearing as soon as he realised whom he killed before I could do something I wouldn't regret.

 _Has the idiot been blaming himself all this time? Was I really so busy trying to comprehend a world where Al is effectively my only family that I failed to notice that?_

I shake my hand to alleviate some of the throbbing in my knuckles as someone holds me back. The sky's still steel grey and I have to wonder what I am doing. When they arrested Father, I promised myself I would never fight for my family with violence — at least, not before witnesses.

But here I am with bloody knuckles, being held back as I desperately hope I snapped my stupid, stubborn genius of a brother out of that self-blame funk. That he will go and be who he has always wanted to be; that he won't let that sleazy puppet-master's actions break him in a way that the fall-out of Father's actions never managed.

Because I am not sure I could take it if he looked back and realised that I am already broken.


	14. Finals Round 1: The Lonely Dragon

A/N

 **Finals Round 1: Knockturn Alley**

BEATER 2: Set your story in Horizont Alley

 **Optional prompts:** (song) Shots — Imagine Dragons ; (image) art/A-family-of-folded-dragons-24110210 (beater 2)

 **Word count: 2 798**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the Harry Potter series. Also, I don't own the things from optional prompts.**

 **The Lonely Dragon**

 **I.**

 _Am I out of luck?_

 _Am I waiting to break?_

 _When I keep saying that I'm looking for a way to escape_

 _Oh, I'm wishing I had what I'd taken for granted_

 _I can't help you when I'm only gonna do you wrong_

Percy wants to refuse; he wishes he was right, or at least not so stubborn. He wishes it had never come to this. He would be glad if the ground opened up and swallowed him whole. This, he believes, closing his eyes and boxing his regrets and wishes down under the murky depths of teenage dreams and half-forgotten lessons on goblin wars, is purgatory. Maybe he is even already dead and just missed the memo.

Although, come to think of it, no, he had never been that lucky.

He offers Madam Umbridge a thin, wooden smile and says, "Of course, I'd be glad to help," because that's what he is supposed to do. Because saying anything else might be the right thing to do, the brave thing even, but it would also be utterly in vain.

Percy has always hated purposelessness. Or he thought he hated it. But hate is such a strong word, and it seems so misused on anything other than the murdering sycophants that had sold the government and their coworkers alike to the big, evil, unnamable psychopath.

And so Percy follows the pink toad to a little apartment in Horizont Alley, right above the barber's shop, without protest. His smile stays affixed by the liberal use of barely contained hysteria and dutiful concentration on the little ironies that would have annoyed him once upon a time — from the harmless ones of the lamp shop located on the corner of Knockturn Alley, to the grimmer ones about how he, himself, must be considered a murdering sycophant by most. Or better yet, how that sounds almost better than the truth because then he wouldn't feel this bad, would he? It would also speak better of his intelligence — too bad that he is spineless either way.

These musings keep the pitiful smile on his face up until he enters the flat to find a familiar woman laying on a sofa. The Muggle-born Registration Committee normally does not do house-interviews, but Mrs Coulen wrote to them about her injury and invited them. The wording of the letter niggled at Percy, but it is her face that lets him know the truth.

She was a Ravenclaw prefect when he was a first-year and he had admired her. She was a picture of cool and collected calm, and she could, and did, call those that angered her idiots in innovative ways — often in such a manner that said idiots failed to notice that she was even insulting them. Her marks were perfect and she always carried herself with poise.

Now, she is laying on a sofa with one leg elevated — its shape concealed by some neat spell he has never heard of 'so it won't offend as it is still not a pretty sight, what with the regrowing flesh and skin'.

She still manages to keep her poise and sound calm, but her words are all wrong. And Percy shivers as he realises that Umbitch will send this woman to Azkaban for one made-up charge or another. He doesn't need to be looking into that toad's beady eyes to know they are filled with jealousy-fuelled loathing.

It won't be theft of magic since the witch is not a Muggle-born. Maybe a line-theft or something along the lines of rassenschande since her new last name is so unfamiliar. Just as Percy's train of thought reaches this critical point, he hears a noise from another room. Worse, Umbitch hears it too.

 **II.**

 _Oh, I'm going to mess this up_

 _Oh, this is just my luck_

 _Over and over and over again_

"I'll go check it out," he says, hoping he sounds as sickeningly eager to help as when he started working at the Ministry, and not as if he wants to run away and pretend that everything is alright.

He finds himself in a child's room. The walls are painted the gentle sky blue and little Golden Snidgets and Fwoopers are flying merrily around while, towards the floor, painted flowers sway gently in a summer breeze.

It makes such a beautiful picture that it makes the reality all the more jarring. He surveys the room with a frown. The window faces Carkitt Market, but is closed, and even if it wasn't, the market looks like it has been abandoned for ages. If he hadn't seen it bursting with life a year ago, he never would have believed it had been. Percy sighs. He can't return without an explanation, but if the girl is here, he doesn't want to find her.

No one is hiding under the table, but there is a coloured pencil that must have rolled off the table. On the table are: a letter, a dark blue piece of paper and more of the coloured pencils. He skims the letter and rearranges the letters on it into a new message with a nifty little spell that doesn't show on standard anti-tampering scans. He looks the new letter over:

* * *

 _Love,_

 _I've seen the summons. I don't understand why they want you and not me, but it can not be anything good. I'm taking Nimueh with me. Hopefully, by the time you are reading this, we're out of the country._

 _If it was just me, I wouldn't run, but I can't do that to our daughter. Be strong; be safe. And know that we are safe and we love you._

 _Always Yours,_

 _Mark_

 _P. S. If you decide to sail, know that Elrond is wise, and if he can't find us, he will know who can._

* * *

Yes, he decides that would work. It contains just enough vague allusions to be believable. Now, to find out what made the noise and how to pull it together. He pockets the letter and grabs the blue paper and two of the pencils. He casts a nonverbal Silencing Charm on the door and Homenum Revelio on the room. Percy sighs as the bed lights up. _Of course, the child is hiding under the bed; it's not like he seriously entertained the possibility that she isn't there, is it?_

He drops to the floor and meets a pair of terrified, impossibly wide blue eyes. The little face looks shockingly pale in the shadows under the bed. The little girl hunches even more into herself as he meets her gaze. He swallows heavily.

Part of him wants to smile at her and say everything will be alright, but he remembers pressing himself into Charlie's side in their basement during the First War a bit too vividly to think that would go over well.

Instead, he says: "Hi, there."

His mouth feels incredibly dry. The little girl is looking at him as if he were a Dementor. He bites his lip. He can do this; he has to.

He points his wand at one of the coloured pencils and transfigures it into a cat. A Russian blue.

"I'll tell the bad lady that the noise we heard was her," he says, pointing at the cat.

The girl cocks her head to the side and blinks. She still looks scared, but he has interested her. It's almost enough for him to pretend that she isn't scared of him.

He folds the paper so it forms a triangle with two layers and a one layer rectangle. He severs the rectangle and pockets it, leaving him with a perfect square. The girl has relaxed a bit more. He smiles.

"I'll make you a guardian, alright? It'll keep you out of the sight of bad people."

"What sort of guardian?" inquires a tiny whisper.

"A fierce one," he replies, his hands folding the paper in familiar motions.

"My big brother used to make one like this for me when I was about your age. He used to say that with a dragon on your side, you have nothing to fear."

He tries not to dwell on the memories of hiding in the dark. Of fear, so palpable one could practically see it in the air and taste it with every breath. Or how even the toddling (and terrible) twins understood when to stay silent and still.

He gently lays the finished dragon before the scared child. He wove his intent to protect and hide into every fold he made, but he isn't sure that it will hold against _Homenum Revelio_. Since while it's true that this form of magic is no less powerful than the wand-waving one, it is also an older form, predating that spell. Origami magic — when done right — is a little like a cross between complex wand-magic and runes. Every fold has to be infused with intent, and the finished shape is like a rune holding the spell in place. Percy always liked the elegance of it. One just took a piece of paper and turned it into something magical.

She presses the blue dragon to her chest and he feels the compulsion to look away wash over him. He nods firmly and points his wand at the remaining colour pencil. The girl is watching him intently, so he slips into the exaggerated casting mode he used when tutoring, clearly pronouncing, " _Portus._ " He pockets his wand and gives the Portkey to the little girl.

"This will take you to Pilliwinkle's Playthings if you say 'Family' while holding it."

He scoops the cat to his chest and says: "I have to go before the bad lady starts looking for me. Be safe, little one. And should you find yourself at Pilliwinkle's, ask for Audrey; she is very nice."

He leaves the room without a backward glance with the letter and the cat. He is smiling blandly and trying not to fall apart. A lifetime ago, he was hiding in the dark with the family of dragons. He would never have thought that he would miss it, but he does.

Back then, he was scared stiff, but he didn't know what it meant to be alone, let alone lonely. Hidden in the dark, he was still sure he was a good little boy. Now? Now, he is a man trapped in a job that he always wanted because he never imagined it could be perverted like this.

He keeps his posture rigidly straight and lies like never before, because he has a job to do, and it was never supposed to involve terrorizing the people. He naively thought he could trust the Ministry; he has been cured of that notion quite spectacularly. And if they are so stupid as to think he will do as they say after screwing him over because he isn't running around like a headless chicken and saying, ' _This is wrong'_ , well, then they are already deceiving themselves, so who's counting one more lie among backstabbing liars?

 **III.**

 _I'm sorry for everything_

 _Oh, everything I've done_

 _From the second that I was born it_

 _seems I had a loaded gun_

 _And then I shot, shot, shot a hole_

 _through everything I loved_

 _Oh, I shot, shot, shot a hole_

 _through every single thing that I loved_

He sits at Caroline's Creamy Delights, scowling at his ice-cream. George is paying for the order (he insisted) while Charlie is ostentatiously pretending that Percy isn't there. Bill is coolly staying out of it, Ginny is helping Charlie, and Ron is, unsurprisingly, running late.

Percy isn't sure who came up with the idea of taking George for ice-cream, but he is pretty sure it is not right for the celebrated person to be paying for everyone. He supposes he should be glad the area is slowly returning to its pre-war state, but he can't help it if his eyes are drawn to the unrepaired areas. Maybe it is because he is having ice-cream in a confectionary in Horizont Alley, rather than at Fortescue's, since that famous parlour is still closed for reconstruction.

The torn storefronts remind him of his own destroyed life. It's one of life's greatest ironies that he is still working for the Ministry, and that his twin brothers, with whom he has always had the most problems and who never let him get away with anything, were the first ones to forgive him.

Oh, sure, in the heat of battle, the whole family was glad to see him. But once it was over? Now, well, how do you mend bridges with someone who is pretending you aren't even there? How do you go back to how things were when you know they never can be like that again?

He looks up when the door chimes to see Ron disappearing into the shop. The alley is filling with people as the first genuinely nice spring day with bright sun and clear blue sky works its way into the weary hearts of the survivors.

Percy wonders if any of the passersby will try fawning over Ron or George or, worse, yelling at him for being there, standing uselessly when—

He shovels a large clump of ice-cream into his mouth to kill that train of thought because that way madness lies and howls its ever-present siren song.

He greets George and Ron with a warm smile as they finally sit down at their table. Maybe this idea has its merits; maybe they can get rid of this awkwardness before the celebration that is happening later today.

Ron smiles at him, just a tired little curve of his mouth.

"You know, Hermione mentioned something about the previous government having a creative filling system. Something about it looking like it was done by insurgents."

"She always was a clever girl," Percy replies, warmed by the sentiment. It wasn't anything obvious, he wouldn't have been able to get away with that, but in his own way, he never has been one for sitting about idly.

"Insurgents?" Bill asks incredulously.

"Despite popular belief, Umbridge's career at the Ministry doesn't mean everybody working there was an amoral turncoat."

Charlie is opening his mouth, a bit red in the face, when a girl runs to their table. She is wearing a sky-blue robe, her hair bouncing in two pigtails and she is smiling toothily. She pauses just short of the table. Her blue eyes are firmly locked on Percy as if he is the best thing ever. Probably even better than ice-cream since her mother is nervously looking her way from the waiting line.

"Hello," she says.

Percy is sure he is smiling in the same silly way he did when Penny agreed to be his girlfriend.

"Hello, Nimueh."

"Mister, my friend is lonely."

"Really?"

She pulls out the blue, slightly crumpled-looking dragon from her pocket. She cups her hands under it and stretches her hands towards Percy.

"Really," she says firmly, nodding emphatically. "See?"

"Well, we can't have that, can we?" he says.

The girl beams at him.

Charlie stutters: "You remember these?"

Percy smirks. "Remember? Please, I made them live up to their promises."

Ron looks confused, while Bill laughs and conjures a few square sheets of gold-tinged paper. Ginny asks: "What promises?"

Charlie closes his eyes, reminiscing. "We don't have anything to fear, little one." He pulls one of the leaves to himself, starting to fold it, and finishes with a flourish: "For you see, I can call forth a mighty, fierce protector who will keep you safe."

"But," Bill adds, folding a dragon himself, "I don't remember these little things being able to defend anything."

"Of course not, you never did figure how to breathe the magic into them," Percy pompously proclaims, placing his own finished creation next to the original blue one.

By the time Mrs Coulen gets to the table with two cups of ice-cream, three new dragons have joined the blue one.

She gives one cup of chocolate ice-cream to her daughter and then looks at Percy sternly. "I want to thank you and also warn you."

"Warn me?" he asks, confused.

"Yes, Audrey didn't sound all that thrilled about some inconsiderate redhead just sending kids over."

Percy pales, much to the general laughter.

Yes, he should have found a way to inform Audrey of what he was doing; maybe not the first time he sent someone over, but when he realised there would be other times. It was pretty inconsiderate of him, alright, but he knew Audrey would help and a kid in a toyshop wouldn't stand out.

But soon, he is laughing with the others because it has been way too long since he has seen George laugh like this; since he felt like this. For the first time in what feels like forever, he isn't alone, but with his family and the family of dragons, he wouldn't have it any other way.


	15. Finals Round 2: Of Monsters and Friends

**Finals Round 2: Name, Place, Animal, Thing**

 **Player prompt (Beater 2):** _ **D: Daphne Greengrass, Dungeons, Demiguise, Duffel bag**_

 **Optional prompts:** (location) Hogwarts; (object) textbook; (phrase) under the bed

 **Word count: 1587**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the Harry Potter series.**

 **Of Monsters and Friends**

* * *

 _ **Prologue**_

 _Daphne woke with a gasp, jolting upright. She was in her bed. Her sweat-soaked pyjamas were plastered unpleasantly to her skin, but, thankfully, there was the solid feeling of the soft mattress under her body. There was no rain to make everything wet and slippery, no broom to fall off. Just sinister shadows playing across her bedroom ceiling and walls._

 _Still, the nauseating feeling of falling to her grisly death remained. Daphne stood up, clutching her plushy Occamy to her chest. She lay on the carpet next to her bed, but the shadows terrified her, so she slid under it. The hard floor countered her dizziness slightly and before long, she slipped off into an uneasy, yet deep sleep. So deep, in fact, that she didn't wake when her body started to shiver with the cold, or when an ape with luminous eyes pulled her into a gentle hug. The shivering stopped and the being closed its eyes._

 _When the ape-like being woke, it tried to leave without waking the young girl. But Daphne felt her comfortably warm pillow move away and tried to catch it._

' _Wait! Why in Salazar's name was her pillow moving?'_

 _With that thought, she jerked awake and banged her head on the underside of the bed. She clutched some silvery fur in her hand as — too terrified to move — she watched the shimmering, barely-there outline of a fluffy ape with luminous eyes before it fully disappeared._

' _Is this why adults don't believe in monsters under the bed? 'Cause they can turn invisible?'_

* * *

"SLYTHERIN," shouted the Sorting Hat. Daphne smiled politely at her new housemates, who clapped in a dignified manner. She hadn't really cared what house she'd be in, but it was nice to know that despite all her disagreements with her family, they still had some common ground.

The Welcoming Feast, the settling into her new dorm, the excitement — it all made her forget her initial worries. But the worries returned with full force once the first week of classes was over. One moment, she was thinking about homework, and next, it hit her like lightning out of a blue sky.

She had been in Hogwarts for a full week and she hadn't checked. She hadn't even thought of the monster from under her bed at all.

With a half-hearted excuse about wanting to explore, she slipped away from the other first-years. She needed time alone to think about this and, if she was honest with herself, to calm down. How could she have forgotten? She had been worrying about it for the entire journey on the Hogwarts Express. At the time, it had been easy to pass it off as a pre-sorting anxiety. Merlin knows, all the other first-years had suffered from that. Daphne, though, like a true Slytherin, was ready for every outcome of that.

The monster from under her bed, however — that was another matter entirely. Daphne sighed. The dungeon was dark and dreary, but it was the area closest to Slytherin Common Room and was generally considered their territory, so knowing it was a must. Still, the corridors all looked fairly alike, reminding Daphne of a maze. It would be easy to get lost there. Maybe she should have gone outside, but that wouldn't have guaranteed her any privacy, and she needed to be alone while contemplating her problem.

It was all so complicated. She had once been so terrified of the monster, even as she came to call it Mobie. Not that she spoke to it. Mobie was either quite shy or cunning as the creature rarely let itself be seen. Even when one knew what to watch for, catching sight of the shimmering silhouette was quite an achievement. That was why Daphne could not be sure if Mobie was friendly.

Sure, Mobie had never directly harmed her, but that did not mean it wouldn't, did it? Besides, what if it planned to alienate her from her family? If so, it had certainly succeed. Daphne's mother was not amused when her daughter had come out from under the bed and launched herself at her, babbling hysterically about invisible monsters. Daphne had been told that she was a Greengrass and so should always stay cool and collected; according to her mother, there was no way for anything to get past the ward without their knowledge and nothing matching her description resided in the manor.

Not even the fur was enough to sway the woman. It took months of arguments for Daphne to stop bringing Mobie up, even though she still caught a glimpse of him on occasion. Her father wasn't as bad as mother. Lord Greengrass stayed away from arguments but never treated Daphne as if she was going crazy. Her own mother, though, talked to her as if she was a Muggle. As if she was prone to seeing things! As if she was so stupid as to believe that monsters did not exist!

Oh, Lady Greengrass never actually said that monsters didn't exist. Just that there was no way one could hide under her bed because nothing could possibly get past their ancient, impenetrable wards. As if she hadn't grown up hearing about the impossible happening all the time — the McKinnons' mansion had been just as ancient as Daphne's home with wards that were just as strong, yet it was felled; there was no way to survive the Killing Curse, yet Harry Potter did and got a scar to prove it despite the curse never leaving marks.

Daphne was a witch, though. She knew the monster did exist and was there. She just wasn't aware what type of creature she had met. But she would figure it out, one way or another. She had begun her quest to one-up her mother over this with observation. She kept her eyes out for him — and found herself hesitating whether she was freaked out that there was someone keeping an eye on her or pleased by it. As the years passed and Mobie never harmed anyone, she had started to feel more of the latter. Especially since she had caught it misplacing her mother's earrings (an odd one, not a whole pair) after Lady Greengrass showed once more just how unpleasant she could be.

Mobie alienated her from her sister too. Astoria resented the way she hovered around every evening, but she couldn't help it. Her precious baby sister could be in danger. Admittedly, Mobie had been around for some six years now without harming anyone, so maybe Astoria was right and Daphne was a tad paranoid about it. Still, Daphne would feel better if she could confirm that Mobie had followed her to Hogwarts.

It was because she was worried about Astoria that it vexed Daphne so. It certainly had no connection to the fact that she noticed Mobie keeping a watch over her when she went flying or how he tended to prank her mother when she had been unbearable.

No, it was simply that she was worried about Astoria being left unprotected from Mobie's whims. Daphne couldn't be sure that Mobie meant no harm, especially since he was mostly invisible.

Daphne sighed, rounding a corner. A textbook for Care for Magical Creatures would be a great place to start researching what Mobie was and one was guaranteed to be in the Library. But how could one discover if there was an invisible creature that might not want to be found and, more importantly, whether it was the invisible creature one was looking for?

Daphne huffed in frustration. Exploring dungeons evidently was not an effective way to calm down. She barely stopped herself from hitting a wall and stomped her foot instead. She was too agitated to do research now.

But what else could she do to unwind? _Oh!_ She could use that stupid luggage Davis had come with, the duffel bag or whatever the girl called it — it would make a nice boxing bag.

Daphne turned on her heel with a wicked grin on her face. And came to a screeching halt. She was lost in the Merlin-forsaken dungeons.

And she had thought the day was finally looking up. But no! She just couldn't catch a break, could she?

Someone patted her shoulder. She whirled around, clenching her jaw in a valiant effort not to squeal in fright, and found herself looking at a pair of luminous orbs that were seemingly floating in the shadows of the dungeons.

"Mobie?" she asked in small voice.

The eyes bobbed up and down in what had to be a nod of the unseen head.

"Do you know how to get out of here?"

Mobie grabbed her wrist in reply and started to drag her along. Daphne smiled an honest, happy smile. Everything was alright, Astoria was safe, Mother was willfully blind, and Daphne herself was taking the first steps down a path of her own.

Mobie was there like always, her personal monster under the bed. Only, as she let him drag her through the maze-like corridors, she wasn't afraid. And really, she couldn't have been that afraid of him hurting Astoria if it hadn't even crossed her mind for a whole week, could she?

Mobie's paw was gentle and warm around her wrist. As she started to recognise that they were headed to the Slytherin Common Room, it occurred her that Mobie was more like a familiar — a friend — in any and every unfamiliar place than a monster.

* * *

 **A/N: Firstly: Mobie is a demiguise, Daphne just doesn't know that. Second, in preemptive defense of the use of term boxing bag, I would like to mention the following facts: The first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in England appeared in 1681 in the London Protestant Mercur — therefore before the Statue of Secrecy. Also, boxing had been an Olympic sport in Ancient Greece. The wizards take over whatever muggle invention they deem useful enough (Hogwarts Express, wireless, musical instruments).**


	16. Semifinals: One Bitten, Twice Shy

**Semi Finals: Angsty Fluff or Fluffy Angst**

 **BEATER 2: A fluffy story using the prompt "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" – The Smiths' (song) OR an angsty story using the prompt '"Don't Worry Be Happy" – Guy Sebastian' (song)**

 **Optional prompts:** **(word) lovely, (dialogue) "You really told him/her, didn't you?"**

 **Word count: 1382**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the Harry Potter series nor am I anyone in possession of any recognisable songs. This is done for some strictly non-profit fun and good old-fashioned competitiveness.**

 **Once Bitten, Twice Shy**

Dan Granger stormed out of the house before he could say something he might regret. Admittedly, it was hard to imagine that he could regret anything he could say. He did not think that there was a way to overreact to this. Not a legal one, anyway.

He hadn't been this angry since his grandfather demanded Hermione's immediate withdrawal from Hogwarts, raving about its soul-stealing and mind-rotting tendencies. No, he hadn't been that angry then. Actually, he had been more shaken than angry. Shaken, that there might had been a good reason for all the evil witches figuring in the fairy-tales of his childhood.

His heavy footsteps started to stamp deep in the red sand as he neared his favourite spot. The ocean breeze was soothingly cold against his skin. He took a deep breath of salty air to calm down but it did not help.

The beautiful view that never failed to lighten his mood looked like a final mockery to this God-forsaken day. It was just the type of spot he would find after driving his family around the Southern Europe sightseeing. A place, where one of his girls would inevitably find him bringing chilled drinks with her. On pretty somewhat secluded places like this, he had drunk ice-tea with his daughter and told myths and bits of history when the girl still looked up to him. She used to hang on his every word back then. Later, when Hermione used that time to write to her friends instead of hanging out with her old dad, he and his wife shared their worries and hopes over wine like they used to do when it was just the two of them, although the subject matter had somewhat changed.

It had been impossible to not notice that his lovely daughter was drifting away from them. At first, he thought it was for the best. Oh, he hadn't been thrilled with the idea of her leaving for a boarding school unreachable to them, to her own parents, but he had been glad that she would be among her peers. He had been delighted to learn she had made friends. Alas, he never thought she would stop having time for her old dad before even reaching adulthood back then.

Still, leaving home and managing one's time was a part of growing up. Hermione always was mature for her age, so her behaviour did not shock him. True, it hurt, but he would not begrudge her in this. Dan missed his little girl but was proud of the young lady she was growing into.

He had been so proud of her right till she pointed her wand at him and robbed him of it all. He had gone from proud father to childless man who moved from dreary rainy England to sunny Australia in an attempt to escape the unnatural emptiness and the ghost that seemed haunt his house.

His little girl had done that to him — robbed him of his memories, mauling his very spirit and uprooting him and his wife from his, their, life. If it had been anyone else, he would have killed them the moment he remembered. But it had been his daughter. His brilliant magical Hermione.

He stared at the ocean. Once, he had been proud of his daughter and could not imagine not being so. Later, he did not know he had one. There had been a hole in his chest and a ghost, a phantom in his home. A shape curled on an armchair with a book, someone he turned to with a question — only for an empty spot to greet him as he vainly tried to think of whom he expected to be there. It had gotten better once he and his darling wife moved across half a globe. The sounds of the ocean were much louder than the expected yet absent turning of pages.

The waves clashed rhythmically like a soothing lullaby. In his nonsensically uprooted life, the sun and the ocean had been like nature's way of saying "don't worry, be happy."

Life had seemed too short to live up in dreary cold England when everyone expected them to had a child — no, where everyone knew they had a brilliant daughter. Here, they took courses in surfing and diving. They went swimming in the ocean after work, watched the impossibly large stars at night and slowly made new friends. The barbeques were much more relaxed than afternoon teas.

In both lives, he could remember being happy. He could not remember feeling like this. Betrayed, hurt, vulnerable, unsure of what is true and what is a fiction of his or Hermione's making. If his heart wasn't telling him he had been missing her, he would never have believed the resurfacing memories. But, heavens above, they felt right — even though it hurt, he could not doubt them.

Dan sighed, he knew one of his girls would find him soon and he had no clue how to deal with this. He always wanted his little girl to grow into a strong woman but he never considered her using that strength against him or her mother. He was sure Hermione wanted them to come back, to go back to England like the last few months never happened, but he wasn't sure he could do that. Just thinking of what he would tell to everyone he used to know made him dread such a course of action. His rainy homeland seemed less appealing with every minute he considered going back. He had no clue what his wife wanted, what she felt. Hurt, for sure, but beyond that? He wasn't sure what he himself felt beyond hurt, confusion and betrayal.

He hadn't heard her come, so he started at the feel of her arms sneaking to hug him from behind. She leaned against him and put her chin on his shoulder.

"We must seem mad," she said.

"Without a doubt."

"But I still want to return."

He looked at the sea. 'Return, to what?' he silently wondered. To rainy smog-filled London streets and the upper-middle-class society that will look through their fingers on them for this unplanned trip, they wouldn't have a good explanation for? To the family that had not questioned their sudden leaving because they didn't expect a straight answer as there rarely was one since Hermione turned eleven. Here, they could tell everyone that Hermione was working with something they did not understand at all and is a very independent young woman that drops by from time to time for Emma's cooking and nobody would find it even slightly strange.

"Do we have to?"

"Yes, we left in a bit too much hurry."

"But— "

"No buts. We just tell everyone that we left for our and Hermione's protection and that while it's no longer needed, we like our new home, so we'll be staying there."

He kissed his wife. Sometimes she knew him better than he knew himself. She proposed a way not to lie and to run on with this impossible situation like it was something she did all the time.

"Have you told her yet?"

"That we won't be staying in England? No."

Dan kissed her again. He knew telling Hermione this wouldn't be pretty, but he didn't care. What she did wasn't pretty either and, in his humble opinion, his witch of a daughter needed a bit of old-fashioned payback to give her a reality check.

"I'll do it."

Sometime later, Dan wasn't fazed by the slammed door, well aware that his daughter could have done much worse. The scary thing was, she _could_ have done much worse and left him none the wiser about it. He didn't think she would but he hadn't thought she would steal his memories either. The old adage about the way to hell had never sounded so bitter.

"You really told her, didn't you?" asked his wife with obvious amusement. Dan grinned wolfishly. He would never tell anyone, but for a moment, he was worried she would be cross with him for being so blunt with their daughter. Life was… not exactly good, for he would not feel almost scared of his daughter if it was good, but it was certainly looking up.


	17. Finals: Footprints in Snow

**Finals:** Your task for this round is therefore fairly simple: You are to write about a student's experience during one of the seven years that Harry Potter was at school (including his seventh year, even though he was off wandering around Britain). However, this character MUST NOT be a member of the 'Golden Trio' (Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger) or be Draco Malfoy.

 **BEATER 2: Write a story set during Harry Potter's seventh year (1997–1998 school year). (See the discrimination? I can't write about Muggle-borns cause technically, they weren't students at the time.)**

 **Optional prompts:** ( **song) Remember the Days of the Old School Yard - Cat Stevens, (setting) Quidditch pitch**

 **Word count: 2 236**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK so I don't own author rights to the Harry Potter series nor am I anyone in possession of any recognisable songs. This is done for some strictly non-profit fun and good old-fashioned competitiveness.**

 **Footprints in Snow**

 _Remember the days of the old schoolyard_

 _We used to cry a lot, oh don't you_

 _Remember the days of the old schoolyard_

 _When we had simplicity and we had_

 _Warm toast for tea and we laughed_

 _And needed love...yes, I do_

Luna sat at the Ravenclaw stands on the abandoned Quidditch pitch, clutching the newest issue of _The Quibbler_. When she was younger, she cherished each issue as a piece of home in the gloomy place the castle often was before she made friends. Her father's words — even printed and formulated for the masses — were like a warm embrace, a ray of sunshine after a week of terrible, constant, chilly drizzle.

It had been different during her fourth and fifth years. Each issue had been beloved then too, but it had lost the unhealthy edge of being one of the only truly good things in her life, it had during her first three years at Hogwarts.

Now, however, she felt as if she lived from one issue to the next. Luna treasured each issue with all her heart and anticipated them with frantic terror **.** These days, every word printed in _The Quibbler_ filled her with pride. Her brave father was acting like a true Ravenclaw, loyal to the truth in the face of adversity.

Her father's bravery wasn't the reason she cherished each issue, nor why every new delivery made her smile. Rather, it was because she had proof in her hands that he was well enough to manage his job, that he had not been taken. That at least he had been alright not so long ago.

The issue clutched in her hand had arrived ten days ago, but Luna needed its solid presence in her hands to soothe her aching soul, just as the chilly wind settled her nausea. She tried to focus her mind — still caught in the turmoil of the Dark Arts class — on the pure snow, as innocent as part of a cloud gently covering the tired earth. The glistering white snow seemed to hold a promise of something better, but Luna could not quite get rid of a nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong.

* * *

 _Remember the days of the old schoolyard_

 _When we had imaginings and we had_

 _All kinds of things and we laughed_

 _And needed love...yes, I do_

 _Oh and I remember you_

Astoria took a deep breath of the freezing air. Her hands were clenched into fists — so tight that she could feel her nails through her thick gloves. There, on the freezing Quidditch pitch, such an action could easily be excused as an effort to keep her always-cold hands from turning blue.

Astoria wasn't bothered by the cold — she was a witch, after all. Outside, the cold made sense, whereas the one she felt inside the castle did not. There, it bothered her and she shuddered. It was like back when she was still an 'ickle firstie' and there were those monsters guarding the school. She cracked a half-smile at that. _Well,_ of course, it was. The school was once again under the guard of monsters.

The pure white snow glistered with its siren-like promises, but Astoria knew she had to return to the castle sooner rather than later. She had to make it back to the common room before Daphne had time to worry about her absence.

For now, she enjoyed the silence that was, for once, not oppressive but peaceful. The sun glistened off the snow. _Wait. Are those —_? _Yes, there are footprints in the snow._

With a bit of trepidation, she let her eyes follow the trail to the Ravenclaw stands before they turned away as if of their own accord. Astoria nodded to herself, sure that whoever had the same idea as her had been clever enough to use quite a strong charm based on _Notice-Me-Not._ She herself was using a variant that made her almost invisible to anyone with even slightly hostile intentions towards her, on top of a normal _Notice-Me-Not_. A bitter smile stretched her lips at that thought. She hadn't considered how it'd allow her to hear all the nasty things her housemates wouldn't dare to tell her to her face.

The smile dropped almost as quickly as it had come. She turned around and, sure enough, there was another trail of prints in the snow leading to her own location. How careless of her, to leave such an obvious clue as to her location. Not that she was likely to be in too much danger. Still too young to be seriously pressured into service. Too young for serious sexual attention. But both just barely.

Astoria shuddered. Truth be told, her best defence wasn't her youth, skills or even protective older sister. No, ironically enough, her best protection was the malicious rumours whispered behind her back. _Why waste time on a weakling that is not going to live? The curse will see to her early end, anyway_.

Astoria hid her face in her hands as she silently acknowledged to herself that these rumours were unfortunately true. That was why her days hit her so hard, why her hands and feet were always so cold, why she could not take a hot shower before breakfast without risking a bout of fainting.

She pulled her hands from her face and drew her wand. With purpose but without a word, she started waving it around. First at the pitch itself so no one would see the footprints leading to the individual stands, then she turned in to face the castle, intent to take care of the trail from the building.

She gasped. And instinctively put her fist to her mouth to stifle any more noise. Out of all the people who could have noticed the trail, it just had to be _them_. Just her luck, really.

* * *

 _Remember the days of the old schoolyard_

 _When we had simplicity and we had_

 _Warm toast for tea and we laughed_

 _And needed love...yes, I do_

 _Oh and I remember you_

Luna noticed that someone else was on the pitch due to the snow. It lifted and puffed like a disturbed cloud of fairy-tale dust. Then it settled back as clear and unblemished as if it were freshly fallen. It was most certainly done by magic.

Once upon a time, she would have laughed at the display. It was such a pretty sight and had to have been done by silent or almost silent casting. Instead, Luna's heart skipped a beat as she realised that someone had just covered their — and her — tracks. She looked up and froze. On the path from the castle, following a trail that ended just short of the pitch, were two unmistakable shapes. Out of all people, it had to be them, didn't it? _The Carrows_.

She shook herself out of it. Remembering only too vividly what trouble a piece of parchment could lead to, she tapped her wand against her copy of _The Quibbler_. It folded into a crane. She added a _Disillusionment Charm_ and bid it to fly to the Ravenclaw tower. It took off and she tried to work out what to do now. The Forbidden Forest was too far away across a coverless stretch of snow for it to be a viable place to hide, especially given the weather conditions.

From the way the snowflakes moved, whoever was there with her — and looking now, Luna could make out a feminine figure by one of the keeper posts — had apparently noticed the approach of the adults when covering their tracks. Luna sighed as she edged to a vantage point that would allow her to see the approach of the Carrows while hiding her body. It was helpless. If they cast _Homenum Revelio_ , they would find them both. And if they weren't looking for anyone, then the best she could do was stay hidden. Maybe that was why the girl by the posts hadn't moved or maybe she just didn't know what to do. Luna could sympathise. While she could see through the charms enough to know that it was a slender girl about her own age, she had no idea of her standing in all this. Which side was she on?

She didn't have any idea either as to why the Carrows were traipsing outside in the snow when they had a whole castle full of students to torment. She swallowed hard as she realised that the most likely options were a) they were looking for someone specific who wasn't in the castle or b) they had been called away by their Lord. And once again, Luna was back at her dilemma: was it better to stay hidden or should she try to flee? She felt a sick certainty that if she did manage to flee, her fellow students would suffer for it. So she stayed frozen, unable to tear her eyes away from the approaching pair. Amongst her panicked thoughts, one kept nagging at her. C _ould she live with herself if she left others to suffer in her place_?

 _Could she?_ She didn't know. Even as she was found, manhandled and taken out of the school grounds, Luna wasn't sure. Sat in a dungeon, the thought played over and over. _Could she? Would it be worse, letting them hurt someone else, or watching her father's face if she was used against him? Would she even live long enough for it to matter?_

* * *

 _You were my sweet love, my first sweet love_

 _My lovey dove, my love lovey dove_

 _No matter what place, whichever the place_

 _I still see your face, your smiling face_

 _In childish dreams, inside my dreams_

 _Like king and queen, god save our dreams_

Astoria watched in silent horror as the Carrows took the girl that had been on Quidditch pitch with her away. Luna Lovegood went seemingly willingly, but Astoria knew better than to believe that. She silently followed them to the school boundaries and watched them Apparate away.

It was hard to connect this dignified woman with the slip of Ravenclaw, with that girl who believed in Nargles and appeared like she was looking through people that used her as a butt of their jokes. Astoria had never spared that girl a second thought, but this woman? She admired her. Even while powerless, Luna appeared in control.

Astoria stood spellbound, her eyes glued to the place where Luna stood before the crack of Apparition took her away. Maybe she was just a girl whose days were numbered, but as the darkness fell around her, she vowed to herself to try and live up to Luna's example. She turned around and headed back to the castle, thinking of how her sister must be worried sick and that she needed to pass the message onto Neville's group. One of their own had been taken for reasons unknown.

Trudging through the snow, Astoria wondered how it was possible that the castle felt more like a prison now than when it had been guarded by Dementors. Maybe it was because back then, Draco had still been his cocky self, so arrogant even as he hid himself behind his father's metaphorical robes — Astoria had found that funny back then. But now Draco wasn't even there, Blaise had lost his blasé attitude, Theo was even more withdrawn than usual, and Daphne was clingy. There were empty spots in classrooms and at dining tables that never failed to attract eyes. The places where Muggle-borns used to sit, left alone by an unspoken agreement like mementoes of the fallen. Everyone was jumping at shadows. What she once would have called paranoia was suddenly common sense. And for what?

For the purity of blood? That thought made her want to laugh. The new Headmaster was the son of a Muggle, as was the Dark Lord, or so the rumours said — and she checked the anagram to see if it fit and since the time Tom Marvolo Riddle did not get the DADA position, no one had been able to keep it. For the preservation of magic? How could anyone believe that when the Death Eaters were destroying the very world they claimed they were saving? That night, Astoria was forced to accept that unless the light won, there would be no point in living anymore. The New Order would cast a terrible, Dementor-like effect over the whole wizarding world.

She might be just a weakling, but Astoria would be damned before she just stood by and let that happen. Not that the Light was without its faults. Being treated like a potential threat simply because of the colours of her tie — in the chaos just before the final battle — had forcefully reminded her of that after her cooperation with Neville's group almost made her forget it.

She fought with them anyway. Astoria had made a promise to herself not to stand idly by back then — when Luna was taken and she started to actively spy for the DA. There was no time for indignation in war. Besides, she and Luna made a surprisingly good team, fighting back to back and taking down grown men whom the wizarding world at large feared. And maybe, if they put their mind to it, they could make a damn good one outside the battlefield, too.


End file.
